Project First Light: A Detailed Overview
Project First Light: Proving a New Path for Youth Development
Goal: To validate our core engagement loop and test our adaptive learning engine.
Participants: Canadian youth (ages 15-21), with a focus on those from underserved communities.
Timeline: 6 months (across two distinct development cycles).
Funding Source: Seeking seed grant funding from community-focused funders like the Ontario Trillium Foundation, TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, or CIBC Foundation.
Partnership Ask: Seeking one eligible lead organization to act as the grant administrator and collaborate on pilot recruitment.
Our Core Objectives
"Project First Light" is a focused research and development pilot with three clear objectives:
Validate the Core Engagement Loop: To test and refine the VIGOR value discovery process and the MiCoRe mission planning framework, proving they increase youth engagement in their own skill development.
Test the Foundational Learning Engine: To pilot our proprietary MMMAAP framework, assessing how our ReACT adaptive engine personalizes instructional content for different learner profiles.
Foster Interest in Critical Skills: To create pathways for youth to explore and build competence in key areas, including the STEM fields, by connecting their intrinsic motivations to tangible, in-demand skills.
A Rigorous, Two-Cycle Journey
To ensure our platform is both technically sound and genuinely impactful, our 6-month pilot is structured as a two-cycle journey. We begin with deep, collaborative refinement before scaling up to measure broader impact.
Our journey starts with the Co-Design & Refinement Cycle, where a small, focused cohort of 15-20 youth will join us as true co-designers. Through intensive, high-touch user testing, continuous interviews, and collaborative workshops, we will refine the platform's core experience. This cycle is about listening and iterating—improving the questline narrative, ensuring the technology is stable, and confirming the user journey is intuitive and engaging.
The insights from this first cycle will directly inform the Impact & Validation Cycle. Here, a larger cohort of 75 youth will engage with the refined version of the "Project First Light" platform. This phase will allow us to step back and measure the quantitative impact of the experience, validating the effectiveness of our model at a larger scale and gathering the data needed to prove the concept.
Measuring What Matters
Our success will be measured through a mixed-methods approach that tells the full story of our impact. In our first cycle, we will focus on achieving a high degree of user satisfaction with the platform's narrative and usability.
In the second, larger cycle, we will shift our focus to quantitative outcomes. We will assess platform engagement through a composite score of login frequency and task completion. To measure value clarity, we will use pre- and post-pilot surveys to demonstrate a statistically significant increase in participants' confidence in their ability to set meaningful learning goals.
Crucially, this pilot will allow us to evaluate our adaptive learning engine. We will analyze the relationship between different learner profiles and the adaptations made by our ReACT engine, assessing whether the engine’s shifts between our six MMMAAP instructional modes are effective, timely, and perceived as helpful by the users.
A Commitment to Ethical Research
As a research-focused organization, we are committed to the highest ethical standards. Our entire data collection and reporting protocol for "Project First Light" will be designed for submission to a university Research Ethics Board (REB) for full vetting and approval. We believe in transparency, informed consent, and the responsible handling of user data. Furthermore, our goal is to contribute our findings back to the broader academic community, supporting the growth of evidence-based research in human development and learning.
Ready to Build With Us?
This pilot is a low-risk, high-impact opportunity to be at the forefront of educational innovation in Canada. Let's connect to discuss the details and prepare for the next available grant application cycle.