USSD and SMS Revision Quizzes for Students on Feature Phones
Many secondary school students in Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh have access only to a family feature phone, with no data plan. Build a revision quiz service over USSD menus and SMS that delivers short, syllabus-linked multiple-choice quizzes, adapts to each student's weak topics and gives teachers a web dashboard. Engineer it for USSD's tight limits: short sessions, 160-character screens and dropped connections.
Beginner
Achievable by one student in a semester with familiar tools.1 semester · 1 to 2 students
7 to ship
4 optional extrasSuggested stack
What you should ship
- A question bank of 200 or more multiple-choice questions for one subject and grade, written or reviewed by a teacher, tagged by topic
- A USSD menu flow for registering, choosing a subject and answering a five-question quiz within session limits
- Session state handling that resumes a quiz after a dropped session
- SMS feedback after each quiz with the score and one tip
- Simple adaptivity that gives more questions from weak topics
- A teacher dashboard with class results by topic
- A load test of concurrent USSD sessions and a cost estimate per quiz
If you have time left
- Questions in Swahili, Hausa, Urdu or Bangla
- Weekly class competitions by SMS
- Voice quizzes over an IVR call
- Import of questions from a spreadsheet by teachers
The problem: no data, no learning app
Edtech apps assume a smartphone and a data plan. Many students in rural Kenya, northern Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh share a basic phone with their family and cannot afford data. USSD, the menu system you reach by dialling codes like *123#, and SMS work on every phone and need no data. They are already used for mobile money, so families know how to use them.
What already exists and the gap
- Eneza Education in Kenya delivered revision content and quizzes to students over SMS and USSD on basic phones.
- Africa's Talking offers USSD and SMS APIs in several African countries, with a sandbox for developers.
- Smartphone learning apps cover curricula well but miss students without data.
The gap is an open, well-engineered quiz service you can deploy for a specific syllabus, with adaptivity and a teacher view, built for the real limits of USSD.
Inspiration
Eneza Education showed that students will use basic-phone revision services at scale when content matches their syllabus. Your project rebuilds the core in a way a school, NGO or education department could run with their own content.
What you build
- Students dial a code, choose a subject and answer five questions in under two minutes, then get an SMS with their score and a tip.
- Teachers see which topics their class struggles with.
- Programme managers see usage and cost per quiz.
The technically interesting part
- USSD constraints. Sessions time out quickly and each screen holds about 160 characters. Questions and options must be short and the flow tight.
- State. The gateway calls your server for each step. Keep session state in Redis, handle retries and resume after a dropped session.
- Adaptivity on a budget. Track topic mastery with a simple model and choose the next questions accordingly.
- Cost. USSD sessions and SMS cost money. Measure and minimise them.
How to evaluate it
- Completion rate of quizzes in a test with real basic phones in the sandbox.
- Latency per USSD step under load.
- Resume success after dropped sessions.
- Learning check: a small before-and-after quiz with volunteer students, if a school agrees.
- Cost per quiz at your volumes.
Suggested plan
- Weeks 1 to 3: choose a subject and grade, write questions with a teacher.
- Weeks 4 to 7: USSD flow, session state and SMS feedback.
- Weeks 8 to 10: adaptivity and teacher dashboard.
- Weeks 11 to 13: load test and cost analysis.
- Weeks 14 to 15: pilot test, report and demo.
Path to a product
Telecoms, education NGOs and governments fund basic-phone learning, and schools could pay per student. A reliable service with good content is a realistic product, especially in countries where USSD is already familiar from mobile money. The project shows backend engineering under hard constraints.
Scope warning
Work in a sandbox until you have a partner with a real USSD code; live codes are allocated through telecom operators. Get permission and parental consent before testing with school students. Do not charge students.
Learn what you need on Sefism
- Backend roadmap: webhooks, session state and load testing.
- Mobile roadmap: designing for basic phones and weak networks.
- Redis documentation: session state.
- Express documentation: the USSD callback server.
- PostgreSQL tutorial: questions, students and results.
Get help with this idea
It is tempting to design for smartphones and squeeze into USSD later. Tauseef can help you design the flow within the limits from day one. If you are new here, create a free account first.
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