Edulai

Monitoring and assessing online students' 21st century skills development while suggesting them targeted content for improvement

International Universities and Higher Education Institutions have been challenged for not being able to help students to properly develop those skills and competencies required by the Marketplace.  With the most recent diffusion of digital badges, and with a Competency Based Education System (CBES) growing in US but also internationally, measuring and monitoring students skills and competencies even inside online courses is becoming more and more key.  Institutions can grant access to the market place to the students who will be able to better prove to their future employers, that they have gained the desired skills. Moreover, there are no currently, intelligent systems that can monitor and measure the level of specific skills development per each online student and that can suggest at the same time targeted resources and activities to each learner for improvement.  

Our solution foreseen the creation of an Educational Technology Tool namely Edulai, that can be integrated into different virtual learning environments such as Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas etc. Edulai will monitor and assess the level of competencies and skills development achieved individually by each online student (i.e. critical thinking, team work, online communication, collaboration, leadership etc..)  Edulai will also suggest to each student different online content aimed at improving each student's skills and competencies. Edulai will be able to assess students' skills in different moment in times, while providing both a formative and a summative assessment to each student. The assessment process is called "Triangulated Assessment Framework" (TAF) and it will be undertaken thanks to the Intelligent System, simultaneously each time by three different actors. Both the students and the teacher will have access to these measurements and will see the type of additional content suggested by the system. Edulai will be accessible both via Web and Mobile App. 

Our project will make use of innovative technology in this case Artificial Inelligence, in order to measure online students skills. There is not such a system that is able to measure students' online competencies so far while suggesting them target content. Competitors usually focus their attention on monitoring students' course tasks and assignments accomplishment, on identifying students in danger of dropping out or to under perform, or in suggesting them targeted content for mastering a specific topic (rather than a specific skill). None of them focuses its activity on a system that could actually measure online students' competencies and skills, while suggesting them target content for improvement. Indeed on what basis institutions can now prove and certify that a certain skill has been mastered by a student in front of future employers? How can they help students to improve these skills? 

What makes our solution innovative is the use of a new technology, a new software combined with a sounding pedagogy for assessing online students' skills. So artificial intelligence software will be used for our tool but the way how it will work and the rules behind its work are influenced by key pedagogical principles used in online teaching and learning in Higher Education contexts

Technology is integral to our solution because the product we are creating is a software that can be integrated into different Learning Management Systems used for teaching in Academic contexts. Our software will make use of artificial intelligence including the semantic web for detecting how students develop some skills while learning. Our software is also a recommendation system combined with the use of artificial intelligence that could suggest targeted content to students for improvement. The software can improve and develop over time while people are using it and interacting with it

July- October 2018: testing of our MVP and launching it into the market aiming at the US and Canadian market in principle

July - October 2018: develop local Italian connections with Medium and big size enterprise in order to create awareness around our tool here too.

August-December 2018: being accepted to participate to the NYU Steinhart incubator for planning for a go to market and selling strategy

October -December 2018: acquiring initial customers 5 to 25

January - June 2018: acquiring 25-100 customers while attending international fairs and exhibitions also in Europe (including UK)

Our vision is that we will grow and scale in the same way as the adoption and diffusion of online courses and digital badges in institutions will grow. Indeed our solution is directly related to the development of these two aspects together with the growing importance of soft skills for employers in the marketplace. Hence we count to impact at least 1% of the US, Canadian and European workforce between 3 and 5 years time in addition to online students too.

I have  been retaining several contact details of Leaders in UK Higher Education institution dealing with innovation and e-learning. This through attendance to key webinars to key conferences and exhibitions and through membership of specific international educational networks.

We will initially reach our customer via direct sale, so contacting them via phone number and email. After the first 25 sales we will employ 2 part time sellers who will contact potential customers directly. We will also involve re-sellers for our product that could be sold on-cloud or on premise.

We will penetrate the market initially proposing interesting and competitive prices  

We are currently testing our MVP and the testing will probably start after the summer since schools and university students will be back there in September. So at the moment we do not have users but we would like to gather the first 100 students/users by the end of this year for testing our tool  while involving 6 institutions and to increase the number of users into 1000 in  2019

In 12 months we expect to be serving thousands of online adult students in Higher Education in US, Canada and Europe (Especially UK, France and Germany). We will be serving them through their institutions with the use of Edulai while helping them keep track of the development of their soft skills and improving them and having better chances to access the marketplace. In 3 years time we see ourselves serving also Asian and African populations in the same way as above reaching our thousands students

We have years of experience in teaching and learning online in academic context and in undertaking research projects internationally. In the team there are also skills related to business marketing and communication and to tax finance and business management. We have some niche skills and competencies at international level (i.e in online teaching, research and learning) that will benefit stakeholders and resources we would like to attract in the future

Towards the end of the year we would like to enlarge our team including 1 or 2 ICT staff and 1 more project assistant.

Our business model is a B2B model so we sell directly to institutions. Our sell takes place mainly OnCloud but it could also takes place on premise if required. We count that with the increase of users our Cloud costs will decrease becoming more and more profitable and start scaling. In addition subscription to our edtech tool will imply a yearly competitive fee that can increase if the Cloud space used by institution will increase, independently of the number of their users. Moreover expansion to other international markets in the coming years will help us sustain and expand even more. Considering that soft skills can be measured across different subjects, disciplines and institutions and considering that these are the skills very often required by the market to employees, we foresee a  long term profitability and expansion in the coming years. This also in light of the fact that Edulai can help university students to develop those skills that universities have been criticized for not being able to help students to develop. Hence we are filling a real gap in the system.

Solve can advance our work while creating ourselves more exposure and visibility to the public and to the international context. If we will win a money prize Solve will also help us in achieving some of our planned milestones for the following months. Participating to solve will also help up creating more connections with stakeholders in the field and connections with potential investors

Some of our key barriers are at the moment related to be known among key stakeholders, universities and institutions in the field and Solve can help us solve them in some ways while expanding and establishing more international relationships of this kind. Gaining visibility through Solve will help us gaining more trust among international institutions, among international investors and obtaining also fundings in the near future. Access to more fundings can also help us growing quickly, scaling and becoming more profitable