This document provides background information about Ashwin Ram, the founder of OpenStudy. It discusses his educational and professional background, as well as his work founding Enkia and OpenStudy. It then discusses concepts like cognitive computing and Pasteur's Quadrant that are relevant to OpenStudy. The document outlines problems in traditional education around access and engagement. It discusses how OpenStudy aims to create open social learning communities by engaging students through peer-to-peer learning and gamification. It provides an overview of OpenStudy's features and growth over 9 months, including growing its user base and being adopted by various educational institutions. Finally, it discusses OpenStudy's vision for a worldwide "guild" of learners interacting and helping each other

1. Open Social Learning Communities
Ashwin Ram
Preetha Ram, Chris Sprague,
Saurav Sahay, Hua Ai

2. My Background
 BTech EE IIT Delhi 1982
 MS CS Illinois 1984
 PhD AI/CogSci Yale 1989
 Professor CS Georgia Tech 1989–99
 Professor CS/HCC Georgia Tech 2003–
 Founder Enkia 1999 (acquired)
 Founder OpenStudy 2007

3. Cognitive Computing
Cognitive
Systems
Cognitive
Science

4. Cognitive Computing
Intelligent
Systems
Human-
Centered
Computing

5. Pasteur’s Quadrant
6

6. Application Areas
Games Robotics
Social Media
Monitoring & Diagnostics
Education
Bio/Med/
Healthcare
…and more 7

7. Open Social Learning
8

8. Education: What’s the problem?
Access
More than one-third of the
world’s population is under 20.
By 2006, 100 million qualified to
enter a university will have no
place to go.
To meet this staggering
demand, a major university
needs to be created each week.
— Sir John Daniel (1996)
9

9. Education: What’s the problem?
Engagement
88% of high school dropouts
have passing grades.
— Gates Foundation study
Silent
Epidemic (2006)
47% of dropouts say classes are
not interesting .
60% find video lectures
boring .
60% read less when using
e-textbooks.

10. The Long Tail of Education
Traditional
11

11. The Long Tail of Education
Traditional
MIT OCW: 9m users/yr
iTunes U: 300m downloads
Khan: 30k videos/day
Open Education
12

12. Education: Still a problem
Engagement
60% find video lectures
“boring”.
Great video and talented
presenters. My only complaint:
I’d like to interact with others
who are viewing the resources.
Creating a one-way flow of
information significantly misses
the point of interacting online.
— George Siemens ( 2007)
13

13. What Engages Our Students?
95% spend 10-15 hrs/wk
on Facebook
80% go to Wikipedia
55% use IM for homework
14

14. What Engages Our Students?
$11B market
“I'm calling for investments
in educational technology
that will help create ...
educational software that
is as compelling as the
best video game.”
— Barack Obama (2011)
15

15. Imagine “Open Social Learning”
Imagine a Facebook where
the point is to study together,
not trade pictures and jokes.
Imagine a World of Warcraft where
students earn points by
helping each other learn.
Not educational games. Education experience itself is
structured as a “social game”.

16. Open Social Learning
Self Learners
Traditional
Home
Community Schoolers
Colleges

17. OpenStudy
MIT Purple Math HelpWithFractions Gates/Hewlett
Yale Tutorial.Math.Lamar.ed CalculatorSoup NSF NIH
Michiga u DavidDarling Info GRA GT Emory
n FreeMathHelp

18. The Team

19. OpenStudy is…
“a social platform for learners
who want to help each other study”
“you’re no longer alone—you have the world’s
biggest classroom to turn to, any time, anywhere”
“a global study group”
“global element is important…users
will almost always find someone
online in the study groups”
“one of ten most innovative
companies in education”
20

20. OCW + OpenStudy

21. Community of learners
No boundaries
From 3rd graders
to college students
to professionals
Anytime
Anywhere

22. Community of learners
Multi-student
study sessions
“Make the world
your study group”

23. Community of learners
“Gamification”

24. 9 months of OpenStudy
OCW OER Community
• MIT OCW • CDC (TRAIN) • 50,000 users
• Open Yale Courses • SmartHistory (MOMA) • 600,000 views/month
• OpenMichigan • Purple Math • 18 minutes/session
• UC Irvine • Tutorial.Math.Lamar.edu • 1,000 questions/day
• Notre Dame • FreeMathHelp • 70% answered in 5 min
• NYU • HelpWithFractions
• Emory • BiologyCorner • Study Groups
• Georgia State U • CellsAlive • Math
• Korea University • Physics 1728.com • Biology
• NCTU • HyperPhysics • Physics
• Tufts • CalculatorSoup • Chemistry
• TU Delft • Videolectures.net • Engineering
• Tokyo University • Connexions • Comm & Media
• Process.Arts • DavidDarling Info • Arts & Design
• African Virtual University • HippoCampus • Finance
• Distance Education Univ. Costa
• Prof. Damodaran • Computer Science
Rica
• Monterey Inst. Technology
• Purdue Online Writing Center

25. How to use OpenStudy
Students & Educators
Login or Facebook
Join group(s)
Education Resources

26. User Demographics

27. User Feedback
“Addictive”
“Revolution”

28. User Feedback
“Awesome”
Study help
Peer support

29. User Feedback
“Love it”
“Explanations,
not answers”

30. Open Social Learning
Self Learners
Traditional
Home
Community Schoolers
Colleges
Open Communities of Learning Peer-to-Peer

31. Open Social Learning
Open Communities of Learning Peer-to-Peer
“Massively It is not accidental that social Let students
multiplayer networks are so well adapted to teach each other,
online education. [The] value is in the earning social
learning” — human connections it creates capital via a
students while relieving the drudgery of system of game-
everywhere, studying alone. like rewards.
connected, — Rich DeMillo, C21U
learning
together

32. Other Learning Communities
How do people get
healthcare information?

33. Healthcare Information
Internet is the leading source
of health and wellness information.
Copyright
(c) 2009
Cobot.
Confident
ial &

34. Health 1.0  Health 2.0
Copyright
(c) 2009
Cobot.
Confident
ial &

35. Cobot: Conversation Bot for Healthcare

36. Cobot: Healthcare Info Access

37. Building the Site
Theory Design Technology
38

38. Learning Theories
Fuchs, 1997 Lave & Wenger, 1991
Peer-to-Peer Communities
learning, of Practice
Blended Social
Learning Constructivism
OpenStudy
Dziuban et al, 2004; Means et al, 2010, Vygotsky, 1978
Twigg (2003

39. Architecture

40. Technology Stack

41. Need: Global Real-Time Conversations

42. Technology: Really real-time interaction

43. Need: Finding Open Resources

44. Need: Finding Content and People

45. Technology: Collaborative Info Search
Social Graph User Model Semantic Network
Socio-semantic Network

46. Technology: Analysis Pipeline
Conversations
Analyze Model Retrieve Documents
Users
48

47. Technology: Semantic Analysis
Conversations
Analyze Model Retrieve Documents
Users
Semantic Analyzer
Concept Utterance
Query
Extractor Classifier
Generator

48. Technology: Utterance Classification
– Question
– Advice
– Disclosure
– Acknowledgement
– Interpretation
– Reflection
– Edification
– Confirmation

49. Technology: User Modeling
Conversations
Analyze Model Retrieve Documents
Users
User Modeling
LTM
STM Update Crossover
Update
51

50. Technology: Socio-Semantic Search
Conversations
Analyze Model Retrieve Documents
Users
Retrieval Engine
Case based Web Social
Retriever Retriever Retriever

51. Technology: Recommendation Engine
Case Specification:
Ci = (Qi ,[(r1,hr1),(r2 ,hr2 )...(rn ,hrn )],[(c1,hc1),(c 2,hc2 )...(c n ,hcn )])
Similarity(Qt ,Ci ) =
Qt ∩ Specification(Ci ) Capturing User
Qt ∪ Specification(Ci ) Interactions
Search/
Brows/ R1 R2 R3 …
hrj Rate
Re levance(rj ,c i ) =
∑h rk
Natural
Language C1 C2 C 3 …
h rk ⊂C i Conversations
W Re l(R ,Q ,C ...C ) =
∑ Re l(r ,c ) ×Sim(Q ,C )
i j i t i Problem: Recommending Documents,
j t 1 n Conversations and Users actively
∑ Exists(r ,c ) ×Sim(Q ,C )
i j i t i

52. Need: User Reputation (Social Capital)

53. Technology: Social Media Analytics
 Automatic Measures from System Logs
 User login frequency
 Duration of Login
 Number of user contributions
 Number of medals/fans
 Student Self-assessment measures
 Motivational Strategy of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)
 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
 Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG)

54. Technology: Semantic User Profiling
Team
User A
User B
Individual
Ask Answer
Python
Course-related Programming
Algorithm Java
String C
Variable

55. Technology: Social Capital Analytics
 Bridging and Bonding Social Capital
Bonding
 Bridging: weak ties
 Bonding: strong ties Bridging
 Social Connection Map

56. Architecture

57. Is It Working?
• OpenStudy launched Sep 2010
• 50,000 registered users from 151 countries
• 125,000 unique visitors a month
• Selected for Gates/Hewlett Foundation
challenge grant
• Adopted by MIT, Yale, NYU, many others
• Part of MIT 10-year “billion minds” plan for OCW
• #1 brand in social study
59

58. Education: Disruption Is Just Starting
Homework Help / Test Prep
Traditional • Koofers • Grockit
• Cramster • Sparknotes
• Coursehero • eNotes
Open Universities
• University of the People
• Learnhub
• P2P University
Learning Management Systems
• Blackboard • Moodle
• 9 th Period • eduCommons
• Sakai (open source) • Nixty
Mobile Learning
• Inigral
• Open Culture
60 60

59. Vision: MMO Learning
A world-wide “guild” of people
interacting, helping, collaborating,
learning together.
“Addicted” to studying…
and “loving” it.

60. Contact
www.cc.gatech.edu/~ashwin ashwinram@me.com
linkedin.com/in/ashwinram @ashwinram
63