Speak Agent, Inc. — National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I: EA

Description

This SBIR Phase I project will determine how a system can be developed that replaces second-language textbooks with an intelligent, personalized solution that delivers custom content directly from teacher to student. This system would address challenges posed by low student engagement, high material costs, a need for personalized learning, and a lack of content availability on mobile devices. It will be the first platform to apply open educational resources (OER) to second-language acquisition at scale. This affords an opportunity to observe OER adoption and to understand the dynamics of mulch-author collaboration, forking and merging projects, and editorial systems for maintaining quality. The system could transform the field from a closed system driven by top-down publishing processes into an open system that is more responsive to the evolving needs of educators and students. This will reduce material costs, increase content availability (particularly in critical languages), and enable customization of materials to each program model, class and individual student, thus improving learning efficacy. Educators will also be able to collaborate on large-scale course development projects and share back to the education community. Other fields, including math, science and social studies may be able to utilize a similar system, if proven feasible. This SBIR Phase I project will result in a cloud-based platform for second-language learning content that aims to disrupt the current publishing model and produce a transformation in how teachers teach and how students learn. It will empower the community of language educators to contribute content to a shared repository that all may reuse, revise or remix in their own lessons, units and courses using the clone-fork-merge methodology widely used in software development. It further enables rapid deployment to mufti-platform learning environments, including mobile devices, and integration with education information systems. As proven by open-source software, the creativity unleashed by massive-scale collaboration can increase content availability at a faster pace than top-down publishing can -- and at a lower cost and with a far greater degree of flexibility and customization. The Phase I research goals are to measure student and teacher engagement, impact and commercial viability. Researchers will indirectly observe 1,000 beta users' anonymous behavior over 4 months and measure non-personal data, as well as solicit survey responses from a sub-group of participating educators. By analyzing aggregate public behaviors that are minimally influenced, researchers aim to simulate the dynamics of a robust open education community.