SBIR Phase I: Developing a web-based authoring framework for online animated interactive university-level content via curated crowdsourcing

这个SBIR项目的创新是一个独特的基于网络的创作框架，用于创建动画交互式网络内容，取代传统或在线课程中大学水平的STEM（科学、技术、工程、数学）教科书。HTML5、云服务和无处不在的便携式设备的融合使得网络原生内容的广泛使用为学生提供了吸引人的有效活动，包括动画、交互式模拟器（包括迷你游戏）和自我评估。在传统的出版模式中，这样的内容很难开发/维护，因为只有一个小的作者/编辑核心团队。维基风格的众包方式，在作者/编辑核心团队的监督下，更具可扩展性，但基于web的创作工具只支持有限的内容类型，如文本或绘图。该项目的智力优势在于开发了一种新颖的基于网络的创作工具，用于为动画创建HTML5代码，包括从开发最先进的自动电路合成技术的经验中获得灵感，从抽象的限制形式的英语句子规范中自动合成代码。其优点还在于一个新的参数化交互模拟库，在STEM领域具有潜在的广泛适用性。结果将包括最初的工具和存储库，以及来自几所大学的教师和研究生的使用，以演示众包的可行性。这个项目的广泛/商业影响包括催化出版商和大学之间的新合作方式，在核心团队创作的内容和众包之间取得新的平衡。核心作者/编辑团队创建初始内容并概述需求，需要较少的前期投资，社区采用内容并在核心团队的管理下贡献项目。精心策划的众包内容可以极大地改善内容，降低创作/维护成本。这种方法可以扩展到众包作业、自动评分、在线帮助工具、测验服务、学生表现分析等等，释放大学之间的协同作用，建立有益于社区的通用工具，这是由于大学预算大幅削减而显现出来的一种必要性。该项目最初专注于计算机科学低学科领域，可能会在几年内为公司带来500万美元的教科书收入，考虑到从大学到公司的扩展服务，仅计算机科学就能带来1000万美元的收入，而多个STEM学科则能带来4000万至5000万美元的收入。低级别STEM的目标市场是10亿美元的教科书和20亿美元的扩展服务。该项目的方法提供了一种实用的策略，个别教师最初采用这些内容作为校园或在线课程的教科书替代品，然后可能与院系/大学进行扩展服务安排。

This SBIR project's innovation is a unique web-based authoring framework for creating animated interactive web content that replaces university-level STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) textbooks in traditional or online courses. The confluence of HTML5, cloud services, and ubiquitous portable devices enables widespread use of web-native content having engaging effective activities for students including animations, interactive simulators including mini-games, and self-assessments. Such content is difficult to develop/maintain in traditional publishing paradigms involving a small author/editor core team. A wiki-style crowdsourced approach, with oversight by an author/editor core team, is more scalable but web-based authoring tools support only limited content types like text or drawings. The project's intellectual merit lies in developing a novel web-based authoring tool for creating HTML5 code for animations, including a novel automated synthesis of the code from abstract restricted-form English-sentence specifications inspired by experiences in developing state-of-the-art automated circuit synthesis techniques. The merit also lies in a new repository of parameterized interactive simulations with potentially wide applicability in STEM fields. Results will include the initial tool and repository, plus use by instructors and graduate students from several universities to demonstrate crowdsourcing feasibility. The broader/commercial impact of this project includes catalyzing a new partnering approach between a publisher and universities, striking a new balance between core-team authored content and crowdsourcing. A core author/editor team creates initial content and outlines needs, requiring less upfront investment, and the community adopts the content and contributes items under the core team's curation. Curated crowdsourced content can dramatically improve content and reduce creation/maintenance costs. The approach can expand to curated crowdsourced homeworks, automated grading, online help tools, quizzing services, student performance analysis, and more, unleashing synergy among universities to build common tools that benefit the community, a necessity made manifest due to drastic reductions in university budgets. The project's initial focus on computer science lower-division topics may yield company revenues of $5M in textbooks within a few years and $10M considering expanded services shifted from university to company, for CS alone, and $40M-$50M for multiple STEM disciplines. The addressable market for lower division STEM is $1B textbooks and $2B expanded services. The project's approach provides a practical strategy, with individual instructors initially adopting the content as a textbook replacement for campus-based or online classes, followed by possible expanded service arrangements made with departments/universities.