SBIR Phase II: Personalization Platform to Enhance Third-Party Children's Content and Improve School Readiness

这个SBIR第二阶段项目解决的问题是，虽然移动的设备对教育有很大的希望，但大多数声称具有教育意义的儿童应用程序最终只不过是大脑糖果。此外，少数基于教育研究的应用程序是资源密集型的开发，因此扩大其成功的机会有限。这个项目正在建立一个教育平台，解决这个市场的质量和规模问题。它正在创建一个内容增强系统，专门用于创建基于研究的教育内容，允许开发人员和内容工作室以传统应用程序开发成本的一小部分（10%-20%）构建移动的和Web应用程序。使用该系统构建的内容自动与分析和个性化技术集成，该技术根据儿童的反应为每个儿童量身定制内容。个性化技术应用心理测量学和认知发展的方法，以确保内容适应儿童，并以引人入胜的方式促进学习。该项目将为学前班和小学年级提供一个基于上下文和个性化学习内容的大型图书馆，家长知道这些内容是基于可靠的研究，并最终有助于提高入学准备和学习成果。鉴于对适龄儿童移动的教育内容的需求不断增长，该项目有可能作为一个商业企业产生巨大的回报，重要的是，通过改善教育成果带来的经济收益。它还将使内容开发商有机会经济地开发和部署使用个性化技术的新内容，而不必自己构建这种复杂的技术，从而大规模应用这种创新。SBIR第二阶段项目正在构建一个基于移动的游戏的学习平台，以加载高质量的第三方儿童教育内容，并通过分析和个性化来提高其有效性。为了实现这一目标，该项目正在开发两项重要的技术创新：（1）基于云的个性化引擎，为各种教育环境中的自适应学习提供动力;（2）内容增强系统，通过个性化逻辑提供动力的交互式学习游戏，有效且经济地丰富第三方儿童内容（以数字资产，书籍或视频的形式）。个性化引擎将使用机器学习技术，结合心理测量评估的统计方法和认知发展的原则。它将不显眼地衡量儿童与拟议平台教育内容的互动，并动态调整游戏玩法，以适应每个用户的个人技能、兴趣和教育需求。所提出的利用和增强许多内容开发人员的努力的模型与该领域现有的内容开发范式有很大的不同。该项目的目标是大幅增加移动的设备上个性化、基于研究的学习体验的规模和覆盖面，并最终最大限度地发挥现代技术的潜力，提供动态的学习体验。

This SBIR Phase II project addresses the issue that while mobile devices hold great promise for education, most of the kids' apps that claim to be educational ultimately amount to little more than brain candy. Furthermore, the few apps that are based on educational research are resource-intensive to develop and therefore have limited opportunity to scale their success. This project is building an educational platform that addresses the problems of both quality and scale in this market. It is creating a content enhancement system designed specifically for creating research-based educational content that allows developers and content studios to build mobile and web apps at a fraction (10%-20%) of the cost of traditional app development. The content built using this system is automatically integrated with analytics and personalization technology that tailors the content to each child based on the child's responses. The personalization technology applies methods from psychometrics and cognitive development to ensure that the content adapts to the child and facilitates learning in an engaging way. The project will deliver a large library of context-based and personalized learning content for preK and primary grades that parents know is based on sound research, and ultimately helps increase school readiness and learning outcomes. Given the growing demand for age-appropriate mobile educational content for children, this project has the potential to generate significant returns as a commercial enterprise and, importantly, through the economic gains resulting from improvements in educational outcomes. It will also give content developers the opportunity to economically develop and deploy new content that uses personalization technology, without having to build this complex technology themselves, thereby applying this innovation at a large scale.This SBIR Phase II project is building a mobile game-based learning platform to onboard high quality third-party children's educational content and enhance their effectiveness through analytics and personalization. To achieve this, the project is developing two significant technical innovations: (1) a cloud-based personalization engine that powers adaptive learning in varied educational contexts and (2) a content enhancement system to efficiently and economically enrich third-party children's content (in the form of digital assets, books, or videos) with interactive learning games that are powered by the personalization logic. The personalization engine will use machine learning techniques combined with statistical methods of psychometric assessment and principles from cognitive development. It will inconspicuously measure children's interaction with the proposed platform's educational content and dynamically adjust game-play to suit each user's individual skills, interests and educational needs. The proposed model of leveraging and augmenting the efforts of many content developers is a dramatic departure from existing content development paradigms in this space. The goal of the project is to substantially increase the scale and reach of personalized, research-based learning experiences on mobile devices and ultimately maximize the potential of modern technology to deliver dynamic learning experiences.