This was a project done by me and my classmates Susheel,Venkat and Vinay at a hackathon called Simplihack, held at the SimpliLearn office in Bangalore. SimpliLearn is the world's leading certification training provider with offices in Houston and Bangalore(http://www.simplilearn.com/).
They provide certified online as well as offline training to professionals on courses such as project management, Hadoop and big data, android, six sigma etc. SimpliHack, was a hackathon aimed at improving education technologies.
Our aim was to focus on improving the teaching methodologies of the online pre-recorded video lectures. On going through a few samples, we found the interaction to be very one way. The person watching the video has no way to communicate with the mentor apart from mailing him and waiting for his reply. This can become very cumbersome to someone who has alot of doubts. We also believe that true learning is achieved only when the user applies what he has learnt, maybe through projects.
Keeping these in mind, our solution consisted of three components working together in order to create a better overall education system to compliment the pre-recorded video lectures.
1. A ranking system- By creating a public ranking system, there are multiple benefits. The parent organisation(SimpliLearn in this case), can provide incentives to the top ranking students. The top rankers can request they're ranks to be put up in they're certificates. It will also create a competitive environment leading to better attempts and to take up more courses. Our ranking algorithm takes the following into consideration-
i) % of completion of a course( i.e number of videos he watched)
ii) Score of the multiple choice quiz he has to take at the end of the course
iii) Number of questions and doubts(of others) he successfully answers in the discussion forum.
iv)Number of upvotes of the questions he asks in the discussion forum.
v)Number of projects done.
2. Real time in video doubt tagging - We want to establish the classroom environment to the fullest possible extent. In a classroom, a student can raise his hand at any point of the lecture and the techer will answer his doubt. This ability to interrupt the teacher and clarify his doubt ensures that he is not lost in the next part of the discussion. Since the videos are pre-recorded, and not a live webinar, it is impossible to achieve this in the current scenario. Our method of real time in video doubt tagging helps coming close to achieve this.
Using this, the viewer can pause a video at any time and ask a question with a click of a button.
The question is stored in our database along with its timestamp.
The next time a different user watches the same video, a pop up at that particular timestamp shows up with the question asked. The second viewer can either choose to answer the question (if he has understood the concepts), or upvote the question so that another user maybe able to answer it. The viewer can also view the best answer if the question has already been answered via the discussion forums.
This creates a classroom environment simulation where doubts can be posted in real time and simulates a student raising his hand in class.
3. Our third and final component is in the direction of helping him implement what he has learnt in a project. We use geolocation and google maps javascript API to show the user, other users near him who have taken the same or different courses.
This way he can contact those users and they can work on a project together. The project done by them can be uploaded on his profile and would hence improve his ranking.
With these three components working together, our system will effectively improve the learning process and help simplilearn, as well as other educational video providing organisations, effectively ensure learning of the masses. The video doubt tagging provides a classroom environment. The geolocation provides oppurtunities to implement what he has learnt. And the ranking system keeps him in the loop and gives him a reason to learn further.
We were awarded the best Out of the Box idea prize by simplilearn and were given 15,000 indian rupees.
The languages used are HTML, CSS, PHP, javascript , AJAX, SQL and the only external API used is Google Maps javascript API.
The source code with instructions to use can be found here -
github repo
Please mention any feedback in the comments section below.
They provide certified online as well as offline training to professionals on courses such as project management, Hadoop and big data, android, six sigma etc. SimpliHack, was a hackathon aimed at improving education technologies.
Our aim was to focus on improving the teaching methodologies of the online pre-recorded video lectures. On going through a few samples, we found the interaction to be very one way. The person watching the video has no way to communicate with the mentor apart from mailing him and waiting for his reply. This can become very cumbersome to someone who has alot of doubts. We also believe that true learning is achieved only when the user applies what he has learnt, maybe through projects.
Keeping these in mind, our solution consisted of three components working together in order to create a better overall education system to compliment the pre-recorded video lectures.
1. A ranking system- By creating a public ranking system, there are multiple benefits. The parent organisation(SimpliLearn in this case), can provide incentives to the top ranking students. The top rankers can request they're ranks to be put up in they're certificates. It will also create a competitive environment leading to better attempts and to take up more courses. Our ranking algorithm takes the following into consideration-
i) % of completion of a course( i.e number of videos he watched)
ii) Score of the multiple choice quiz he has to take at the end of the course
iii) Number of questions and doubts(of others) he successfully answers in the discussion forum.
iv)Number of upvotes of the questions he asks in the discussion forum.
v)Number of projects done.
2. Real time in video doubt tagging - We want to establish the classroom environment to the fullest possible extent. In a classroom, a student can raise his hand at any point of the lecture and the techer will answer his doubt. This ability to interrupt the teacher and clarify his doubt ensures that he is not lost in the next part of the discussion. Since the videos are pre-recorded, and not a live webinar, it is impossible to achieve this in the current scenario. Our method of real time in video doubt tagging helps coming close to achieve this.
Using this, the viewer can pause a video at any time and ask a question with a click of a button.
The question is stored in our database along with its timestamp.
The next time a different user watches the same video, a pop up at that particular timestamp shows up with the question asked. The second viewer can either choose to answer the question (if he has understood the concepts), or upvote the question so that another user maybe able to answer it. The viewer can also view the best answer if the question has already been answered via the discussion forums.
This creates a classroom environment simulation where doubts can be posted in real time and simulates a student raising his hand in class.
3. Our third and final component is in the direction of helping him implement what he has learnt in a project. We use geolocation and google maps javascript API to show the user, other users near him who have taken the same or different courses.
This way he can contact those users and they can work on a project together. The project done by them can be uploaded on his profile and would hence improve his ranking.
With these three components working together, our system will effectively improve the learning process and help simplilearn, as well as other educational video providing organisations, effectively ensure learning of the masses. The video doubt tagging provides a classroom environment. The geolocation provides oppurtunities to implement what he has learnt. And the ranking system keeps him in the loop and gives him a reason to learn further.
We were awarded the best Out of the Box idea prize by simplilearn and were given 15,000 indian rupees.
The languages used are HTML, CSS, PHP, javascript , AJAX, SQL and the only external API used is Google Maps javascript API.
The source code with instructions to use can be found here -
github repo
Please mention any feedback in the comments section below.
No comments:
Post a Comment