SOASM (pronounced SO AWESOME)

Our solution, SOASM, is an AI-based assessment tool that can do both mandatory assessments as well as optional assessments. Students may have to interact with it for mandatory assessments but for the optional assessments, it happens without too much intervention and interaction of the students. Our solution is a powerful combination of a unique pre social media platform that tightly integrates student assessments within it. By integrating two solutions into one, a comprehensive platform can be presented to the teachers, students and parents. 

The various aspects of our solution is briefly described below:

a) As an assessment tool, teachers can administer assessments that are deemed mandatory ones to students periodically. Assessments can be taken by the students verbally or in a written form, or in any kind of an art form. The AI-based engine shall be capable of performing assessments across a wide variety of inputs.

b) As a social media tool, students can be part of a school group or their neighborhood group. This shall ensure that they interact with only those children whom they meet often, and too in-person. Often, it's easier to say unpleasant words in a chat window to people whom you may not meet regularly. So by ensuring only children who often meet are part of a group, unpleasant online interactions can be minimized.

c) The students on their part, can use the solution to upload pictures, videos, artwork, etc related to their hobbies in a group where the other group members are their classmates along with their teachers as well. Only encouraging emoticons like thumbs up, claps, etc shall be available as reactions to such posts. Any bullying or unpleasant words can be moderated by the AI-engine or the teacher or both.

d) The AI engine, behind-the-scenes, can look at the posts shared by the students and mark their interest areas while sensitively gauging their levels. Again, only three levels shall apply, Good, Can get Better AND Not Started Yet.

e) Parents can also use the solution to check how their child is doing both with assessments and in the group. However, they will not be able to comment in the group. Eventually, parents will also have access to tools such as Drug Assessment score, etc.,

f) The school administrators can get an in-depth view on what the interest levels of a class are and can recommend or implement next-level courses for them. For example, if it can be seen in the reports that quite a few students are interested in basketball, the school can bring in next-level basketball coaching for the class.

Our AI-based Assessments solution has tremendous potential to revolutionize the way students learn by providing personalized, efficient, and data-driven educational experience within a safe environment of an Offline Social Media.

The AI engine can analyze students' strengths and weaknesses and tailor the content accordingly. This personalization helps in addressing individual learning gaps and promoting a deeper understanding of concepts tailored specifically to each student’s requirements.

Our AI engine could adjust the difficulty of questions based on the student's performance in real-time. Also, with AI, one of the significant advantages could be instant feedback

Our solution can also compile long-term performance data to identify trends and patterns in a student’s learning progress while providing a scalable and efficient system. 

In our assessments we have included gamification, making them more engaging and less stressful. This includes earning points, achieving higher levels, and receiving virtual badges/gifts, which can further motivate students to perform better.

Overall, our AI-enabled Offline Social Media with built-in assessments offer a comprehensive approach to students in their learning and growing process.

Our team comprises of members with Information Technology expertise, members with expertise in developing educational products for underserved, government (public) school-going students, members with experience and expertise in building physical coding kits that teach coding WITHOUT computers to poor students who otherwise do not have access to computers, members who have the drive to create positive impact in the society and have demonstrated by contributing in the space for nearly a decade amongst other members who have diverse skills in content development, designing assessments and so on.

We have built an assessment tool which isn't AI-enabled as yet but the questions are dynamic in nature. Also, previously, we had built a prototype with custom LLMs trained on historical data with built-in feedback mechanism that is capable of performing multi-variable regression and predict Drug Addiction Risk scores for parents to access via WhatsApp. The design for the Offline Social Media with built-in assessments is ready and our existing assessment module can be AI-enabled and integrated which can act as a template for other types of assessments.

Our solution addresses the twin problems of lack of incomprehensive student assessments and lack of awareness amongst school students joining social media at a young age.

SOASM, pronounced SO AWESOME, which is an acronym for Social, Offline, Assessments-included Social Media, is being built as a pre Social Media tool that can teach politeness, empathy and kindness amongst classmates while also enabling camaraderie amongst classmates. Most often than not, classmates aren't aware of each other's passions and hobbies. This leads to a lot of disconnect amongst the students. On the other hand, the more each of them know about the hobbies and interests of others in the class, it would be a more connected and vibrant classroom.

By enabling sharing of their hobbies and interests, and only to classmates or friends in their neighborhood whom they can get to meet on a daily basis, our solution is trying to make classmates know one another better and be kind to one another by appreciating each others work.

By tightly integrating assessments into the same solution of providing a safe platform for children to share, a separate solution is not needed for teachers and administrators to conduct assessments that are based on AI. 

AI-based assessments within our solution can further be extended to assessing interests in specific sports, arts, etc. 

While Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing are used while interacting with students when they take assessments, LLMs specific to specific skill areas such as artwork, music, sports etc can be built that can assess the students work. For example, if a student uploads their sketch work in their group, while the rest of the classmates can applaud and encourage the student on the platform, the same artwork can be supplied to a specific LLM that can assess artwork without having to interact with the student. The teacher can also verify the AI's assessment capability, if needed and in the process, improve the LLMs accuracy over a period of time. 

We have implemented assessments in all our products with reasonable acceptance and success. Right from pen and paper type of assessments (due to lack of devices with students) to completely digitized assessments, we have designed and implemented them is the underserved student communities. Gamification along with small incentives to engage with our products have helped.

One of our popular products, ProGame - Coding WITHOUT Computers uses AI to identify images, handwriting and printed text. More recently, we have implemented an AI-based drug addiction assessment score prediction as a prototype. We have enough expertise in-house to design AI-based solutions and get it developed using larger development teams that can be scaled as needed.

We understand that implementing any AI-based solution requires a focussed approach to ensure they are equitable and free from bias.

We shall ensure that our AI models are trained on diverse datasets that represent a broad range of demographics, including ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and more. This diversity shall help prevent the AI from developing and perpetuating existing biases. Also, students from diverse backgrounds can be involved right from the design phase all the way through the implementation phase to better understand their usage behaviour.

By implementing robust feedback mechanisms that allow students and educators to report potential issues with AI assessments, we shall ensure feedback is used for continuous improvement of the system.

Two full-time & two part-time team members are working on it currently. We are looking to expand our development team.

For another product that we have developed recently, ProGame Tactile - Coding kits for the visually challenged, we involved few groups of visually challenged students from the very start of the development process which eventually helped us in building a useful product.

We intend to bring a similar kind of an approach in the development of SOASM as well right through to a pilot project in the next one year or so.

The overall design of the solution is ready, certain modules are ready to be integrated as a AI-based module. With the right kind of support, we are confident of making the progress as planned.

At Next Skills 360, we have always focused on building innovative and inexpensive educational products for underserved student communities. We created an inexpensive cardboard-based kit that can be used by economically weaker students to learn computational thinking skills to get on par with other students. To make learning coding skills inclusive, we have come up with a coding kit for the visually challenged as well. We would like to ensure SOASM, like all our previous products is available, accessible and affordable to all users more so to priority leaners at scale and develop a comprehensive, inclusive system.

To develop such a comprehensive AI-based system would require financial support to engage a highly technical team for about a year or so. Also, assistance in getting the product initially piloted and eventually launched in schools is something that would be greatly appreciated.