Q: So can we please have your names and titles so we have both of you?
Zayana: “So, Diana Medrea-Mogensen, she is the Founder of We Are Entrepreneurs, and she is the funding strategist in the company. So, she’s responsible for the application, and raising funds, at least for on concept ideas.
My name is Zayana Pompaeva and I am the EU Project Manager in the company. So I’m also writing from the concept notes. Sometimes I’m coming up with my own ideas and the right projects from there, but otherwise I’m managing the projects, and MOBIpreneur was a project that I wrote.
So it was Diana’s concept and Diana’s idea. I wrote the project, applied, and then we got funding. And yeah, it was the first project that I wrote and got funding for. And then I was managing it. So it’s like operational and administrative functions, but also coordinating between all the other partners to make this happen basically.”
Q: So, tell us about MOBIpreneur and what it is that MOBIpreneur is supposed to do.
Diana: “Right, I can take that one. So, MOBIpreneur, it’s a project, a European project that aims to bring entrepreneurial education, some business knowledge to the phones of entrepreneurs. It was born from an observation over the years of teaching entrepreneurs that they do not have time and are actually quite reluctant to take whole courses because they have bits and pieces of information that they need, and they do not, CAN not prioritize taking a whole course, going to, you know, business school or take a more formal approach to training.
But they still have very big lacks in their knowledge that, of course, you know, transforms into missed opportunities, delayed results, and, maybe even the closure of the companies. We know that small companies, they close very often and it is also due to lack of knowledge.
We wanted to fix that using technology to bring a shorter format content to their phones. So we started looking into microlearning, which was becoming popularized online with this short format content.
Yeah, and that’s that’s pretty much what it is in a gist. Like I said, it’s a publicly-funded project. We are funded by Erasmus+ here in Denmark, so the money comes, it’s managed through the national agency, and we’re acting coordinators of the development of this project, meaning that we have a team of five organizations that contributes to the development of this. The result of this is MOBIpreneur.”
Q: Yes, and you’re from We Are Entrepreneurs in Denmark, and then there are four other partners, but from all over the world, right? Or all over Europe.
Diana: “Exactly. So we have our technical partner in Romania that are called Tech Breeze. We have our partners in Italy that are called Servin. In Spain, we are working with DEVELOPIA Foundation. Slovenia. We have a school in Slovenia that is called CDI Univerzum.”
Q: Is that why the WhatsApp application is only available in those five countries?
Diana: “It is, because under the project, we need to implement it in the participating countries as a pilot project. And then when it’s finalized, it will be broadly available to everybody else that wants to use it.”
Zayana: “They actually can (be from other countries). It’s just because now we’re testing and we are piloting in five countries, but when you go to the MOBIpreneur website, you can register. Yeah, the phone number can be any phone number, but it’s just for us to know from which country people are registering, right?”
Q: And how did you stumble upon microlearning, and why did you think this was relevant?
Diana: “Well, you know, I think it was observation and also because I am taking an education in adult learning. So it was a bit of a mix of factors at the time. Social media videos were becoming more and more popular. At the same time, we were seeing that people do not have the attention span needed to stay through long courses. And then I could also see that adults learn from getting their questions answered. It’s pretty intuitive also in marketing, you know, with all these keywords and key phrases, you need to hit the spots of what you’re trying to learn or find out about.
So I just thought that that could be a winning combination. Now that we’re having it in implementation, I can see that there were some lagoons (holes) in my assumptions, but that’s the fun part of it. That you get a theory and then you get to test it and you learn along the way.”
Q: And what have you been learning so far?
Diana: “What have we been learning so far? Well, I mean, I think ours, it was very good timing, but at the same time, not the best timing. Because when I started this project and when I wrote this project, ChatGPT wasn’t popularized.
So we wanted to create something similar to ChatGPT, but that was just answering business-related questions. So that would be very helpful, like we all know, because ChatGPT is helpful in that way. But then it got popularized, and now everybody compares MOBI with ChatGPT.
And we were so blindsided by this. And now, even though we try to say like, listen, it’s not like artificial intelligence, it’s just a robot that’s supposed to answer business questions. And we trained this robot with OUR knowledge, like with the business knowledge that we have accumulated that we think is relevant for you. But it will not do what your ChatGPT does.
To clarify, MOBI is a learning tool. A teacher so to say. It pulls information from a curated list of sources that we selected. Language models pull information from the wide web, using some criteria to answer, giving an illusion of understanding what is being asked, but in reality it has no way to check if the response it provides is factual. MOBI’s limitations ensure the veracity of the content even if that makes it less entertaining. The goal was on-demand education in the pocket of the learner and that MOBI does.
So the answer is like, ‘Yeah, I know, but my ChatGPT knows me so well. And then, you know, it’s so much easier to talk to him.’ And we’re like, I understand that, but ChatGPT pulls out from everything, not only business-related knowledge.
So we’re curating this for very specific answers that can help you solve a problem in your business. However, that is very hard to land because now they are used to using these robots in a very particular way and ours doesn’t respond to that.”
Q: Interesting. But tell me, how are the microlearning videos? How is that progressing?
Diana: “I think what it was nice for us from an educator perspective, it was very nice to create courses like this because we could really bring it down to earth. Instead of doing the theory of something or the model of something else, we created the course by answering questions. How do you do this? What to do when this happens, you know, so very, very straightforward.
So anyone who goes through the 119 lessons that we created can immediately find out if they have this question or not. However, education still being education, we still see a reluctance of people going and watching the videos, at least so far. I think education works well in a formal setting because there’s an element of obligation. There’s a huge personal incentive, but also very big consequences if you don’t. So in our case, we are struggling to, yeah, get to everybody who thinks ‘We can benefit from it.’ ”
Q: So do I understand correctly that what you do is you have a WhatsApp that will answer the questions, and then they will send out the learning at the same time?
Diana: Yeah, exactly. That is very correct. What we are doing is we created a learning journey, for a five weeks-long learner’s journey. It can act as a linear journey, but it can also be modular.
So it really picks up from a very initial interaction with the learner through our own robot on WhatsApp. And then based on the questions and based on their interactions with the learner, it recommends lessons that we have created and that we have uploaded in uQualio (on the platform).
These being video lessons, they are the ones who we have uploaded on uQualio, so they are uQualio links basically that are being fed into the conversation into this learning journey that we have created for them.
And this journey also has two scenarios where one – the learner is active where it slowly puts the learner through all the courses. And one journey where the learner is not active, where it creates engagement questions and check-ins with the learner to nudge the learner to actually interact, right, or not to fall off this course.”
Q: And so what features on the uQualio platform have you found to be most valuable for you in this process?
Diana: “Oh, I think that goes back to Zayana.”
Q: Yeah, because you need to run.
Interview resumes with Zayana Pompeava of We Are Entrepreneurs.
Q: What features on uQualio were most helpful or valuable for you?
Zayana: “Yeah, so I was coordinating the other whole process. I was uploading and then our partners were uploading as well. I think it’s quite straightforward, like the whole process of uploading the video.
I think it was very nice that when uploading the video itself, it could use the, we didn’t need to upload the so-called thumbnail, because it was used from the video. That was very nice.
Then the feature of the quiz questions, which is built-in, is also very nice. So we just let our partners know, like, what format it should be and then they were just doing the questions and just putting it there as well. The Resources, yes, because we wanted this to be very practical. So almost all lessons, they have these additional resources which we need.
We didn’t use that yet, but actually that was the question that I think once I asked you how long, but I see that you can do this transcript, but that you can also upload captions. And I’m not sure, but I think you can also create captions there, right?”
Q: Yes.
Zayana: “Yeah, so I think that will be very useful for us because we pilot in five different countries. In Italy and Spain, we had to translate the whole thing, like all the videos, all the slides, all the materials, because they pilot in their languages. So all the videos should be in Spanish and Italian.
But for Denmark, Romania, and Slovenia, for example, we pilot in English, and almost everyone speaks English, so we don’t need to translate everything. So what our plan is, is to do the captions in Danish and other languages.
And yeah, and then just translate these supporting materials and quiz questions, of course. So I think that feature will speed up the whole process much, much more because also to create captions in a separate service online or whatever, you need to download the video so that to create this SRT file, or whatever it’s called and all. So it’s also quite a big process, I would say.”
Q: Yeah.
Zayana: “Then, what else? I think the users, they were not using it yet, but it’s very nice to have this evaluation feature where users can just, you know, put some stars to the specific videos or to the specific modules also.
This is still our biggest surprise yet. I guess it takes some education of the user when introducing a new method and tool for learning.”
Q: Give ratings.
Zayana: “Yeah, the rating, yes, exactly. So yeah, I would say that this was very helpful to us. So that was quite understandable and quite easy.
And also, like how it is built, because we need basically five different pages, you can say, for five different languages, right? So to have these channels and to have a separate page for each language is what we needed and it’s very nice to have it.
So, yeah, I would say the whole, you know, like how the platform is built and our needs, it was quite, yeah, matching each other, so it was quite easy to operate.”
Q: So if you were to recommend uQualio to somebody who might be looking for a video LMS, what would you be saying to them?
Zayana: “Well, I would say that it is a very usable platform and that, for example, that there are many more features that we were not using because we were doing videos from scratch. But I know that you can do, like you can record yourself, so you can actually build videos there. Which maybe for some other people would be more relevant than for us.
And I would say that, well, I use some other platforms, but not very much. So I think that for someone who needs also like tracking data and so on, that’s very, very insightful. Since our courses are open, of course, there is less that we can track.
But, you know, in general, and I’m actually recommending the platform to our community and to entrepreneurs who are participating now, because some of them are coaches, some of them are consultants and so on, and who knows, maybe they will need that kind of, you know, platform to create some educational videos for their purposes and for their clients.
So in that way, I’m always recommending them to go and watch the videos and see how it works so that they can understand that, you know, they don’t need to necessarily pay to some other platforms and they can use the local Danish product, basically.”
Q: But if I know you’ve also worked with other training platforms, and I mean, uQualio is video-based and micro-learning focused. What if you were talking to somebody who had been working more with traditional learning, what would be the key benefits of using micro-learning like uQualio? Why would you suggest them to switch?
Zayana: “Well, I’m actually suggesting that to everyone now because, well, of course, when you’re talking to university or something, it’s different. But even there, I think now where the learners are going is different apps. And again, yes, ChatGPT and other things, but apps where it is already part of our kind of, you know, learning habit, and how we consume information is also due to all these social media and so on. We consume information like that.
And I’ve seen it on my own example, on example of our past like three years of content creation and discourses creation, how the engagement is not easy. So, you know, if it is someone from like a traditional educational system, then of course, if it’s like master or bachelor, they have to go to a certain program. But there are also a lot of like orientation programs, shorter-term or shorter length programs that could be used in a way or built in a microlearning format.
So, my main point is that, well, if you would like people to engage and not only engaging just to get a certificate for the sake of the certificate to share it on LinkedIn or, you know, other platforms. But if you actually want them to take something and use and apply that knowledge, then this is the way to go. Because it is, yeah, I see a lot that people like doing it sometimes because they want to get their certificate, they want to get some kind of visibility. But how applicable that knowledge is and how much they will actually use it while dealing with clients, you know, making their business work. That is a big question.
And we don’t need more information nowadays. We just need something fast and applicable to answer the question, to do some kind of practice, to gain some kind of skill and then practice it.”
Q: THAT.
Zayana: “You know, and see if it’s working or not. And if it’s not working, then have some kind of an idea what to do differently or what to do next. So that is why we did it like this. And that is why I’m also recommending, you know, people that I’m talking to, the educational content. To try to approach it from this perspective. And normally it causes a lot of interest, actually. It’s just a matter of that when you’re creating the content, like for us, it was quite a change from creating traditional kinds of courses to create microlearning because the brain works totally different.
And you have to adjust to that and yeah, and put some kind of concepts into a very, very small and short format, basically.”
