SBIR Phase I: Adding Value to the World's Free Online Educational Content to Upgrade the Online Learning Experience

SBIR第一阶段项目所提出的创新的更广泛/商业影响是创建一个平台，可以使用免费的在线教育资源来个性化在线学习体验。随着教育和专业发展成本的不断上升以及对教育和专业发展需求的不断增加，人们需要负担得起但质量高的教育资源。该计划将为免费提供的在线教育资源增加价值，并允许用户以低成本或免费的方式完成他们的教育目标。学校和大学生将能够通过最适合他们年级、能力和学习方式的资源来完成考试准备和STEM科目的学习。专业人士将能够获得帮助他们提高现有技能和学习新技能的课程。随着用户的目标、兴趣、互动和学习方式的揭示；该软件将能够提供高质量的推荐和增强的个性化。这种颠覆性技术可以消除目前存在于学习者身上的基于收入和地理位置的障碍。在向大多数用户提供免费资源的情况下，免费/付费订阅模式将使公司得以生存。该项目旨在提高现有免费在线教育资源的价值，使其更适合学习者的兴趣、目标和学习方式。越来越多的机构正在制作高质量的在线教育内容，其中许多内容可以在网络上免费获得。然而，目前缺乏的是对这些不断增长的内容进行定制，以满足个人用户的特定学习需求。市场上有一种强烈的需求，就是利用世界上的在线教育内容，建立一个基于网络的产品，能够从各种各样的来源聚合教育内容，并以高度个性化的方式提供给用户。将用户目标、兴趣、过去的学习行为和用户交互结合到用户配置文件中，对于为用户提供高度具体的建议和创建个性化体验非常重要。机器学习和大数据分析以及其他先进技术的使用将是构建此类产品的关键组成部分。

This SBIR Phase I project's broader/commercial impact of the proposed innovation is in the creation of a platform that can personalize the online learning experience using freely available online educational resources. The rising cost of education and professional development along with an increasing need for the same, create a need for affordable but high quality educational resources. The proposed project will add value to the online educational resources that are freely available and allow users to accomplish their educational goals at low or no cost. School and college students will be able to accomplish test preparation and the study of STEM subjects via resources that are best fit for their grade, ability and learning style. Professionals will be able to access courses that help them enhance their existing skills and learn new ones. As users' goals, interests, interactions and learning styles are revealed; the software will be able to provide high quality recommendations and enhanced personalization. Barriers that currently exist for learners based on income and geography can be eliminated by this disruptive technology. A freemium/ premium subscription model will keep the company viable despite providing free resources to the majority of users.The project aims to enhance the value of currently available free online education resources to make it a better fit for learners' interests, goals, and learning styles. High quality online educational content is being generated by an increasing number of agencies and a lot of this content is freely available throughout the web. However, what is lacking is the customization of this ever-growing content to meet an individual user's specific learning needs. There is a strong need in the market to leverage the world's online educational content and build a web-based product with the ability to aggregate educational content from a wide variety of sources and provide it to the user with a high degree of personalization. Incorporating user goals, interests, past behaviors of learning, and user interactions into the users profile are important for providing the user with highly specific recommendations and creating a personalized experience. The use of machine learning and big data analytics, as well as other state of the art techniques will be key components in building such a product.