Patent Application
20230325954
The present invention relates to a system and method for facilitating education, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for facilitating affordable education.
Higher education inherently provides better access to opportunity as evident from the higher unemployment rate of young workers without a degree. Furthermore, in the US, the incidence of poverty is higher among those who only hold high school diplomas. The proportion of opportunities for graduates is significantly more than the diploma holders. There are a variety of reasons that students could not have access to higher education. High cost is the primary reason for higher education to be out of reach for many. In developing countries, various challenges for higher education include corruption, infrastructure, faster population growth than in OECD countries, and large student-to-teacher ratios. A more educated society has inherent value beyond just the above demands. For instance, technological progress has been known to be related to the expansion in education and increased opportunities for more people.
Besides higher education, poverty affects the adequacy of quality of primary and secondary education. Gender roles and gender discrimination depending on the country of origin is another major factor limiting access to higher education. Disability, political stability of a country are a few other reasons.
The explosion of online education has long held the promise to remedy the above-described challenges, and in particular, the challenges associated with scalability. However, this has not been the case thus far. One of the main reasons for this shortcoming has been the low retention rate of online courses. Most massive open online courses (MOOCs), online bootcamps, and even some online college programs do not involve interacting frequently with faculty members and other students. This has been shown to be a key factor in student retention. The quality of the course contents has been found to be instrumental for student retention in all types of courses. Students in several studies report that not being able to resolve open questions in what they consider a reasonable timeframe decreases their motivation to continue with such courses. Similar problems and challenges exist with other online models currently in place, such as bootcamp model.
A need is therefore appreciated for a novel educational system that overcomes the above-described drawbacks and challenges with digital education platforms.
The following presents a simplified summary of one or more embodiments of the present invention in order to provide a basic understanding of such embodiments. This summary is not an extensive overview of all contemplated embodiments and is intended to neither identify key or critical elements of all embodiments nor delineate the scope of any or all embodiments. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts of one or more embodiments in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is presented later.
The principal object of the present invention is therefore directed to a system and method that overcomes most of the challenges in accessing quality higher education.
Another object of the present invention is that the system can offer education/training to arbitrarily large populations of learners.
It is still another object of the present invention that the cost of education can be significantly reduced.
It is yet another object of the present invention that the system can be easily scaled up.
It is a further object of the present invention that the required mentorship can be provided to the students.
It is still a further object of the present invention that the carrier services can be provided at end of the program.
In one aspect, the disclosed system can provide for collaborative learning and learning by teaching. The disclosed system uses collaborative learning extensively to both provide learners with all the aforementioned benefits as well as to help solve the issue of scalability. Learning by teaching is a form of collaborative learning that encourages learners to learn a subject and then teach it as part of the educational experience. Systematic and required use of learning by teaching is a key ingredient of how the invention solves the problem of scalability, and at the same time provides learners with unique learning opportunities.
These and other objects and advantages of the embodiments herein and the summary will become readily apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
The accompanying figures, which are incorporated herein, form part of the specification and illustrate embodiments of the present invention. Together with the description, the figures further explain the principles of the present invention and to enable a person skilled in the relevant arts to make and use the invention.
Subject matter will now be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and which show, by way of illustration, specific exemplary embodiments. Subject matter may, however, be embodied in a variety of different forms and, therefore, covered or claimed subject matter is intended to be construed as not being limited to any exemplary embodiments set forth herein; exemplary embodiments are provided merely to be illustrative. Likewise, a reasonably broad scope for claimed or covered subject matter is intended. Among other things, for example, the subject matter may be embodied as methods, devices, components, or systems. The following detailed description is, therefore, not intended to be taken in a limiting sense.
The word “exemplary” is used herein to mean “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.” Any embodiment described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments. Likewise, the term “embodiments of the present invention” does not require that all embodiments of the invention include the discussed feature, advantage, or mode of operation.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of embodiments of the invention. As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprise”, “comprising,”, “includes” and/or “including”, when used herein, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.
The following detailed description includes the best currently contemplated mode or modes of carrying out exemplary embodiments of the invention. The description is not to be taken in a limiting sense but is made merely for the purpose of illustrating the general principles of the invention, since the scope of the invention will be best defined by the allowed claims of any resulting patent.
With regards to the diagrams, the drawn connections between databases are for entity-relation visualization purposes only. In actual, there may be no direct connection between the databases. Every service may manage its own data. Therefore, access to said data is only possible by going through the corresponding microservice.
The term service herein after refers to a set of instruction, software, tool, code, and the like which upon execution by the processor performs one or more steps of the disclosed methodology. The service may take certain requests and/or inputs and returns corresponding outputs. Typically, the services are categorized by the types of tasks they perform. Within a software, there can therefore be e.g., a single service that performs a single task, or multiple distinct services that work in unison to fulfil the requirements of the software, which are determined in step 1. If the former is the case, the problem is referred to as depth oriented. If the latter is the case, the problem is referred to as breadth oriented. Additionally, in the latter case the services are conventionally referred to as microservices. For each (micro)service, in this step key functions are described, as well as what and how data is being stored. This step illustrates the way key functional requirements are fulfilled. This includes data management and data exchange within each (micro)service.
The disclosed system can include functional aspects and non-functional aspects for implementing the invention. The functional aspects are the key features of the invention which upon execution by the processor performs one or more steps of the disclosed methodology. The non-functional aspect are the conditions under which the software should perform the functional requirements. These include constraints and scalability considerations.
The term service or microservice hereinafter refers to a set of instruction, code, or a software which can be executed by the processor to perform one or more prescribed functions. The terms module and service and micro-service are interchangeably used herein after.
The disclosed system can be implemented in the form of one or more servers that include cloud servers. The servers can be located at one place or geographically dispersed. Also, it is understood that the system can be optimized for an acceptable level of uptime based on the demand of the users and the service processes. For this, the servers can be distributed across different geographical regions. Required security measures to prevent any potential threat to functionality and data storage is also within the scope of the present invention.
Drawing in
The following non-functional requirements are not meant to be an exhaustive and complete list of requirements. This is because unexpected considerations may arise when users begin using the platform, or whilst software engineers and testers build the platform. This is a common occurrence in software development and is expected. However, there are some general guidelines that one can plan for, and these are listed in this sub-step.
NUMBER OF STUDENT USERS: Because of the scalable nature of the disclosed system, as well as its potentially low cost, it should be expected that around 5 million active students can register with the disclosed system.
NUMBER OF COURSE ADMINISTRATOR USERS: In certain implementations, it can be assumed that there can be around 150,000 users that are course administrators.
AVAILABILITY VS. CONSISTENCY: CAP theorem states that it is impossible for a distributed system to simultaneously provide all three of the following guarantees: consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Depending on the data that needs to be accessed, one can prioritize different goals. If a choice needs to be made between the availability and consistency with regards to student progression, consistency is likely preferable. In data such as course material, high availability is preferable. This is because it is more important for students to access course material quickly than it is for every student to have the most up-to-date course materials.
DATA ACCESS: There may be courses that are highly popular. On top of this, some groups within a cohort of students may be of a significant size. This means that, for example, many students may, e.g., request the same course materials at the same time. For reasons such as this one, hotspots are expected when retrieving this type of information. The same can be said about assessments and other data that is frequently utilized by students.
MENTOR GROUP RE-ARRANGEMENTS: Student dropouts and group formation at the beginning of each unit should complete within a reasonable timeframe, especially student dropout handling.
COMMUNICATIONS AMONGST STUDENTS: Because of the collaborative nature of disclosed system, it is expected that all students may maintain near-daily communications with other students. This means that for each student, it is reasonable to expect multiple messages sent and received on a daily basis. An arbitrary initial assumption could be that each active student sends 100 messages per day, thus resulting in, referencing non-functional requirement 1, 500 million daily messages. It is also expected that there could be daily video calls per mentor group. This means that the number of daily video calls could be in the order of 5 million.
WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTION: Because this design is for an online platform, there may be students from all over the world. For this reason, it is desirable for students and course administrators to have similar user experiences regardless of their locations.
SECURITY OF USER DATA: Both students and course administrators should have secure account access. This is especially true of course administrators, as some may be in control of courses that are taken by a very large number of students. Measures such as multi-factor authentication can help strengthen security, and are, at time of writing, a gold standard when it comes to online account security.
PLATFORM LATENCY: 100 ms is typically regarded as an acceptable response time, so such latency should be approximated as much as possible. The same should be true for any 3rd party service used.
THROUGHPUT: Throughput may be very high for certain types of requests, such as viewing a certain unit's notes, sending messages to other students, auto-grading of assessments, etc. This may vary according to the time of day. The system should therefore be resilient to such level of throughput whilst still delivering an acceptable user experience. The throughputs may be based on the assumption that there are 5 million daily active students, and 150,000 course administrators. For e.g., assuming each student takes one assessment daily, and these are spread equally throughout the day, then there may be 5 million/(24 hours/3600 seconds) ˜60 assessment evaluation requests per second, though this is an average. There may be times when there are more evaluation requests. For this reason, round up to 200 evaluation requests per second during peak traffic times.
READ-WRITE BALANCE: Certain items in the database may be read far more than they are written on, such as course notes. However, other items may be written on par with how much they are read, such as assessment results. Such balances need to be determined on a per-microservice basis, so that solutions such as replication, sharing, etc. can be put in place.
VOLUME OF DATA STORED: Given the potential number of users and courses, and the fact that each user may generate multiple items of data of different types with multiple fields each, an approximate data volume is difficult to estimate. However, modern databases are not limited by the volume of data stored but rather by the computational complexity of queries and indexes. These limits are unlikely to ever be hit, and various remediation strategies are available when bottlenecks become apparent. As non-functional data storage requirements differ significantly based on the data types and access requirements, strategies may be determined on a per-microservice basis.
Batch processing: At the end of each unit, students are evaluated, and progress determined accordingly. They are also arranged into mentor-mentee groups. This is an operation that is to be performed to all active students. For this reason, parallelization may help speed up this process so that students don't have to wait a long time to see what their next unit will look like. The degree of parallelization is to be determined using the expected number of active users. E.g., horizontally scaling the corresponding microservices may help remedy the issue.
DEPTH VS. BREADTH: Because of the various distinct functionalities that disclosed system has, such as sorting students, detecting dropouts, performing assessments, etc, it makes sense to use a microservice architecture, making this a breadth-oriented problem.
Various microservices and their associated data models can be described. Note that functions that retrieve/write/alter data from the microservice's data store are mostly not included, but their existence is implied. The way these key functions are described is by a function name, conventionally written in snake case (e.g., name_of_function), followed by a parenthesis inside which is a high-level description of what information needs to be provided to the function. Then, a high-level description of what the function does is given.
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Correspondingly, the key functions are the following: begin_admission (user ID and course ID): Described in (a); validate_credentials (credentials and application ID): Described in (b); administer admission_test (application ID): Described in (c); evaluate_admission (application ID and admission test result): Described in (d); and approve_admission (application ID and admission test result): Described in (e).
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In certain implementations, the disclosed system can set out criteria for considering a mentee as a dropout. The disclosed system can prescribe the performance and/or attendance criteria for a mentee in order to not being considered a dropout.
The disclosed system can create groups based on the preferred mentor-mentee ratio. The disclosed system can also determine a number of students there should be in the first group to take the course. The numbers of students in the first group can be based on the available mentors and the preferred mentor-mentee ratio. However, by using the concept of learning by teaching, the disclosed invention can reach an unlimited number of learners. This means that learners can only progress through courses if, after they course a given unit, they each teach a group of other learners the unit they just coursed, with the added requirement that a specified portion of said group pass the unit. This helps in overcoming the bottleneck in scaling in convention educational networks.
The disclosed invention can be versatile in that the course administrator may alter the overall course parameters for newly admitted students. Thus, except the first group, the newly created groups can be customized based on the requirements, such as course materials, preferred mentee-mentor ratio in the groups, number of learning units in the course, passing requirements, and Minimum mentee pass rate for mentors to pass.
The disclosed system can set the required percentage of mentees that should pass a given learning unit for mentors in the corresponding mentor unit to pass. The disclosed system can receive student applications for different courses and can create or modify the general course parameters. For example, the disclosed system can form groups from admitted students such that the first group in the queue has a factor of the applicable mentee-mentor ratio more students than the group that was previously dequeued. The group after should be a factor of the same size larger than the aforementioned and so on. Assign the number of students in the first group if no groups have been dequeued. Label groups starting from g=0, next g=1, and so on.
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The course administrator, herein, refers to an educator that is to create, organize, and orchestrate a course offering. The course administrators can decide what the admissions process will look like. The advantage of the disclosed system is that the courses are run continuously, so the default behavior of ACSES is to leave the student applications process to run continuously so that any student can apply for the course at any time. New course units/groups can be created periodically to accommodate the new students. The course administrator has to define the admission criteria for each course. For example, the course administrator could first decide that student applications consist of a series of mathematical questions revolving around prerequisites and should be entered via an online portal. The course administrator can implement an automated grading system that each application goes through. If an application receives a grade of 75% or more, then the student is admitted onto the course. This is just an example, and different prerequisites can be set by the administrator without departing from the scope of the present invention.
In certain implementations, the course administrators can determine the dropouts in respective courses. Considering the huge student population, the disclosed system can send emails to the student periodically, such as every day, and can receive the response for the email. The student must respond to the email, such as clicking a link in the email or replying with any text within prescribed period. If no response is received by the system, the course administrator can mark the respective students as dropped out.
In certain implementations, the course administrator can configure courses by gathering and organizing course content and assessments, subdividing said content into learning units. The course administrator can decide specific requirements for passing each unit, both as mentees and as mentors; requirements that students must fulfill to remain in the course; the preferred number of students that the first group to take the course should have; the preferred mentor-mentee ratio for the course; and many other factors.
For example, the course administrator could decide to assign four week-long learning units to the calculus course: theory of differentiation, theory of integration, applied differentiation, and applied integration. Each unit has a corresponding set content, collective and individual assessments which are to be automated, and all have a passing grade of 75%, and mentors pass units if half or more of their mentees pass all their units' assessments. The course administrator also decides that in order for a student to remain in the course, they must attend all required peer meetings, once per week, and peer-with-mentor meetings, which occur twice a week. The course administrator has set up the course so that online meetings occur within the portal, and so peer and mentor attendance can be tracked, and the system can therefore mark non-attendees as dropouts. They also decide that students must present their assessments on time, or else be considered dropouts.
In this course administrator's experience, a mentor-mentee ratio of two is optimal for learning calculus. The course administrator further believes that they can mentor a single student and let ACSES do the rest, so they decide that the first group should just have a single student. The next step is for the students enrolled in the course to be arranged into groups. The first group's size shall be as close as possible to the preferred number of students in the first group as specified by the course administrator. Then, the second group shall have an equal or greater number of students than the first group, the third will have an equal or greater number of students than the second group and so on. In general, the first group as group 0, the second group as group 1, and so on until some n, then the (n+1)th group shall have a factor of m students more than the nth group, where m is a number as close as possible to the preferred mentee-mentor ratio.
The calculus course administrator has allows for admissions to be received. By the time the course is ready to commence, there may be seven admitted students. Because the course administrator prefers a mentee-mentor ratio of two and the size of the first group to be of one student, the groups are arranged as per
Once the course administrator decides there are enough students in the queue in order to begin the course, they signal that the first group is ready to begin. Before they do, the specified dropout detection process begins, and also what is called “the assignment of mentors and peers for every group” process. This process ensures that mentors are assigned to students coursing what is known as “mentee units”.
Before describing the assignment of mentors and peers for every group process any further, it should be noted that every unit has a set time interval, and it is the same and carried out at the same time as other units. By this it is meant that every group that is already taking the course shall be starting their respective units at the same time and ending them at the same time, notwithstanding that certain students may deliver the unit requirements prior to the end date of the unit. Therefore, courses are to be structured accordingly. With this understanding, the assignment of mentors and peers for every group process ensures that mentees are arranged in mentee sub-groups led by a mentor each by the beginning of every unit by every group, and according, as closely as possible, to the preferred mentee-mentor ratio, and that in the event of mid-unit dropouts, this process shall continuously ensure that mentees left without mentors and mentors left without mentees are re-assigned appropriately, keeping to the mentee-mentor ratio as closely as possible.
The course administrator can, at this point, make the final arrangements before the course begins. Namely, they activate the functionality in their online course portal that continuously monitors dropouts via the aforementioned process that they specified. They have also made an implementation in their portal to run the default version of the assignment of mentors and peers for every group process continuously.
The next step is for the first group of students to begin the course. The first group of students is to course the first unit as mentees. The first unit is known as a mentee unit. Mentee units are even-numbered units. E.g., the first unit 0, unit 2, and so on. Conversely, odd-numbered units are known as mentor units. The course administrator is to decide whether to have enlisted a supplementary mentor pool in order to mentor mentees from the first group and/or other mentees in any units left without mentors. If the course administrator decided to enlist a mentor pool, mentors may guide mentee sub-groups. If the course administrator has decided not to offer supplementary mentors, then the first group is to take the entire course without mentors, though the course administrator does have the option to change this circumstance for the first group in future units.
In coursing the first unit, some students in the first group may drop out as per the criteria specified by the course administrator. Some may not fulfill the passing requirements and therefore not pass the first unit, and of course, some may pass. Those who dropped out are no longer part of the course. Those who did not pass the unit are to repeat the unit alongside the second group once they begin the unit. Such students are now considered to be part of the second group. The students that do pass the first unit are to progress to the second unit, which, as alluded to earlier, is a mentor unit.
Once the allocated time to complete the first unit is over and both the first and second groups are ready to commence a new unit, the assignment of mentors and peers for every group process ensures that students from the second group, now coursing unit 0 and thus considered mentees, are assigned mentors from the first group, again keeping the numbers within the mentee sub-groups as closely as possible to the desired mentee-mentor ratio, which is facilitated by the relative group sizes between the first and second groups. The second group is to follow the first unit in a similar fashion to the first group, except for the fact that they will be guided by mentors from the first unit. The second unit, now being taken by the first group, consists entirely of each mentor dedicating themselves fully to the success of their respective mentee sub-groups taking the first unit. The course coordinator will have at this point introduced specific expectations for mentors, e.g., meeting with the mentees a minimum number of times per unit, and importantly, that a key passing criteria of mentors is fora specified percentage of their mentees passes the first unit. Some mentors, just like could happen with mentees, may not meet the criteria for remaining in the course by, e.g., not meeting with their mentee sub-groups the required number of times. Other mentors may have had an insufficient number of students passing the first unit.
For those mentors who progress to the third unit, they will be taking this unit as mentees once more. The process followed by them is similar to what occurred in the first unit, and thus the first group continues through the course until they reach one final, preferably mentor unit. The reason for the choice of word “preferable” is because the course administrator may decide for the final unit to be a mentee unit, but this would have the undesirable effects of all groups not having the opportunity to be mentored on their final mentee unit as well as not having the opportunity to reinforce the knowledge they gained on their final mentee unit.
As for the second group, they continuously follow the tracks of the first group, being guided by them as their mentees in mentee units. They in turn guide the third group as mentors, and so on.
The final group's behavior—if there is a final group and no “infinite course offering”—is somewhat different. Because they do not have a group after them, they will not have the opportunity to mentor anybody except those students in the final group that do not pass units and therefore build up a (preferably small) population of students who now make up the final group, but because it is likely that this built up final group will remain smaller than the original final group, not all students from the original final group may have opportunities of mentorship. The students in the final group in mentor units that do not get to mentor anybody are to study extra material of the previous unit, with extra assessments. Because the group above them at these points will be in mentee units, students in the final group are to form mentee sub-groups in order to continue to collaborate with each other—but without the guidance of a mentor.
After all groups have completed the final unit or dropped off, and the course administrator decides not to continue admitting new students, the course is considered closed. However, the course administrator has the option to alter the nature of the course in various ways as the course itself is active. This further provides opportunities for educators and learners to create/evolve/attend courses that are continuously and indefinitely active.
This, in the above example, the course administrator has by this point allowed the student in the first group to begin the first unit: theory of differentiation. Because the course administrator is versed in calculus, they decide to mentor the student in the first group themselves, who is at this point a mentee. The course administrator seems to have done an excellent job in their admissions, as the first mentee attends every required meeting, hands in all required assessments on time, and has perfect scores on all of them. Now the student progresses to the second unit and is to mentor the two students in the second group, who are also perfect mentees, pass the first unit with excellence and therefore, the mentor from the first group also passes the second unit. While the student in the first group progresses to the mentee unit where they will learn about theory of integration, the two students, now mentors, from the second group are now in the second unit and are to mentor the four students in the third group who shall take the first unit—two for each mentor. They are also perfect mentees. This pattern continues until all seven students have graduated from the calculus course. The entire example dynamic is illustrated in
This application claims priority to the U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 63/322,349, filed on Mar. 22, 2022, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63322349 | Mar 2022 | US |
