EduBeyond Project Overview
EduBeyond aims to create digital intervention tools to mitigate the increasing education disparity during the pandemic through private-public partnerships (P3) and peer-based programs.
The bottom 10% of income households in Canada are heavily concentrated in first nation families (Rogova et al., 2016), where most parents would not have completed secondary or tertiary education. The lack of “education heritage” combined with financial constraints significantly hinders the accessibility of academic support.
With the graduating class of 2021 losing, on average, five months of instructional time, the lack of effectiveness in the current digital education infrastructure has disproportionately affected indigenous students across the country, who are already behind due to insufficient infrastructure. Despite Canada’s spending on education growing to an all-time high in 2020 at 11.4% of its GDP (Global Data, 2020), the lack of informed curriculums and pedagogical practices have prevented a meaningful impact on minimizing education disparity.
With the systemic/enforcing approach of education enlarged in a digital setting, the lack of personalization during instructional hours is detrimental for underserved youths, who do not have alternate options for academic support.
Further, current digital solutions, such as Microsoft Teams, Canvas, and Blackboard, have limited capacity for peer-to-peer interactions in the digital classroom space. With peer-to-peer learning significantly contributing to classroom engagement and conceptual understanding (Goldstone & Tullia, 2020), the current digital solutions provided by the governing bodies have yet to establish this concept effectively.
Thus, the current state of public-funded education opens a large window for private-public partnerships to optimize the education infrastructure.
We have developed an adaptive-learning interface that can be incorporated with any curriculum at any grade level between K and 12. With the foundation of a standard digital classroom, we have integrated adaptive feedback systems and course analytic tools to make learning personalized and interactive.
Our digital interface is similar to that of Microsoft Teams and Canvas, including essential features such as classroom chats, WebRTC, assignment upload, and discussion forums. Building upon this foundation, we have integrated several features based on our market research.
To ensure that homework and practice problems are calibrated to each student’s progression and proficiency with the subject, we have developed an adaptive feedback system using the concept of spaced repetition. Depending on the student’s proficiency with each unit, our algorithm will prioritize questions in areas where the student is relatively weaker.
Our platform allows teachers to automate the grading process for assignments, such as multiple-choice questions or matching exercises. Automated marking saves teachers time and allows them to focus on providing students with more personalized feedback, which works in conjunction with teachers rather than replacing them. Teachers can also review and adjust grades, ensuring the final grades reflect student performance.
Teachers can easily monitor student progress using our classroom analytic tools and identify areas where additional support or guidance may be needed. Our platform offers a skill tree visualization, which provides a clear and detailed overview of each student’s skill level and progress across different subjects and topics.
Lastly, EduBeyond provides a chatbot that offers academic support during non-instruction hours. The EduBeyond ‘Cosmos’ chatbot can answer student questions according to course-specific material and personalize test preparation to the strengths and weaknesses of each student. It builds an understanding of each student according to student learning data from in-class assessments and digital practices.