[IMPACT]
A certification is proof of learning achievement that shows a snapshot of a student's knowledge at a given time. It is just an aggregate value turned into a picture taken in the past. What really is fundamental for recall and/or for expanding knowledge, are the multitude (granular) of data transacted before the arrival. In contrast, we can certify a constantly updated learning journey through Atala PRIMS, to connect learning activities data across disconnected institutions, organizations and platforms.
We CAN achieve the reputation of curricula based on effective user learning data using the whole history of transactions, instead of just relying on the brand/prestige of institutions (public or private) as today we are used to doing.
Atala PRISM will provide the tools for the learner to safely manage and share the learning journey as a certification in a visual and trustable manner, identifying the user by his/her learning journey.
A typical certification becomes old, after a certain amount of time. When the user is asked to be re-certified following an updated course, the studying process restarts, often from scratch, even if the materials are mostly the same. By contrast, the learner can update old material in a granular manner, directly with the new one, making the re-certification an obsolete process.
In Figure-1 attached example, a certification in Machine Learning requires propaedeutic knowledge acquired over time. Instead of having isolated certifications per "sub-knowledge" stored in the past, we will have:
- a unique proof of learning not fragmented across institutions and e-learning platforms
- a homogenous proof of learning unrelated by past "sub-certifications"
- an always available proof of learning public and immutable
- a personal proof of learning linked to user identity
- a learning process granularly updatable
- a never old, never expired, never obsolete, never deprecated certification, because the learning journey follows the user life
This project is not just an open-source solution free for everybody (private and business), but it is also compatible with the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of United Nations, a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all people and the world by 2030".
<https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
This proposal matches Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all and 4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
SOCIAL Key Performance Indicator (KPI):
• Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill
• Emulate the learning journeys.
Can we be like someone we admire? Can we learn what our "hero" learned? we could go to the same university (if affordable) but are the courses, materials, assessments still the same? We can achieve it.
What if there is a platform like eToro that shows (instead of market data) the learning journey of scientists, academics, clever people, etc. that people can follow and emulate? Today teenagers are inspired by youtubers and tiktokers because they appear cool to their young eyes. Let's make things clear and show them what is behind the scene, behind the appearance. The knowledge is less evident, it's intangible, let's show it. There is economic and social value there.
• Equal opportunities.
Assuming you want to be certified in "Advanced Management Program" from MIT, but you cannot be there because you live in Africa, especially you cannot afford to pay $65000 because you receive a salary based on the African market (by the way I can't afford it as well :-D ), the job of your dream is precluded forever. But what if there is a nice guy that publishes online all the materials where you can learn things and show your clever employer that your certification is equally comparable (and maybe better if the community evolves it)? This stuff changes the world!
FINANCIAL KPI and potential Business Cases
• Revenue growth
New types of economic opportunities derive from the monetisation of the "pay per view" of the learning journey of specific talented users. Imagine if Alice wanted to know what Bruno learned to become a strong data scientist.
• Revenue per client
Or, if Carol the recruiter of a company wants to hire Bruno but he wants to be sure that Bruno went through a specific learning process. Bruno in these scenarios will receive monetary compensation from Alice, Carol and anybody else, every time someone accesses (after requested and authorization) Bruno's trustworthy lifelong learning journey.
• Profit margin
Every time the learner updates the personal history of transactions with new learning materials, he/she could micro-pay for the storage/network, in this way the ecosystem is sustainable and incentivised.
HOW DO GET PEOPLE TO ADOPT THE SOLUTION
We will build a website (useful also for tracking the progress of the development) where users can play with a demo account.
When the solution is stable and solid, we can start to do partnerships with LMS platforms.
Because the solution is opensource we can build integration with opensource LMS like moodle.
Uncertainty about how Atala PRISM works, so something new to learn for us and extra time required.
Anyway, we are not scared about it because learning is in our DNA.
There is a lack of Plutus/Haskell developers, the available ones we found asked a costly daily rate (crazy things between 50$ and 100$ per hour). Obviously, we cannot afford this expense, that's why our plan is to hire senior developers on a monthly based but train them on specific topics when needed. This problem could slow down the delivery.
SKILL REQUIRED
Mid-level seniority Haskell (or Plutus)=> difficult to find
Atala PRISM => difficult to find
Deep understanding or experience in RESTful API => moderately easy to find
Generic Web stack knowledge => very easy to find
EdTech background => moderately easy to find
Quality Assurance tester => easy to find
[FEASIBILITY]
DEVELOPMENT AND TIMELINE
- Milestone 1 (1 month for 2 developers):
- Study the Atala PRISM SDK.
- Mocking the functionalities and APIs of the main engine, to parallelize the development.
- Milestone 2 (2 months for 1 developer):
- Web and mobile interface to give the user a tool to store by himself the data of to the learning materials and the interaction performed
- Milestone 3 (1 month for 2 developers):
- Full engine implemented and replacement of the mock APIs
- Milestone 4 (1 month for 1 tester/QA and 1 developer):
- Quality check
- LMS integration (only one)
The total time required is 4 months for 3 people working almost in parallel activities with a contingency of 1 month in case of overlapping of the resource.
BUDGET BREAKDOWN
Requested fund: $20000
Monthly salary per developer: $2500
Number of developers needed: 3
Estimated length of the project: 4 months
Cost of milestone 1: $5000
Cost of milestone 2: $5000
Cost of milestone 3: $5000
Cost of milestone 4: $5000
Developer A, 4 months of work, cost $10000
Developer B, 3 months of work, cost $7500
Tester-QA, 1 month of work, cost $2500
• AltiMario, <https://www.linkedin.com/in/altimario/>
Mario is CTO of a successful international e-learning AI company with several patents. Mario has 22 years of experience in IT, he started his career as a software developer in the far 1999. He was a precursor in 2006 of the distance learning solutions, participating in building the Italian Government e-learning platform “FAD” (Formazione A Distanza). Mario’s passion for open source and data stream processing on distributed systems made him build “Data Cruncher” <https://github.com/AltiMario/DataCruncher> the 1st data quality firewall on the market.
Fanatic about functional programming with Clojure, he is converting to Haskell.
• Alfredo, <https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfredo-gemma>
Researcher in Cybernetics and Deep Learning, currently CTO of AI company with several patents and published papers on the field of data compression and speech recognition. Alfredo wrote the paper “Measuring Conversational Fluidity in Automated Dialogue Agents” <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.11790.pdf> and “Fine-Grained Named Entity Recognition using ELMo and Wikidata” <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.10503.pdf>. He has more than 20 years of experience in the design and development of AI, including Distributed, Concurrent and Iterative Computing, Fuzzy Logic systems, Inferential Systems, Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computing, Network Security, Cryptographic Systems, Intrusion Detection and Hack-Proofing techniques.
• The team is expanding with new members
[AUDITABILITY]
We are building an open-source solution, which means the audibility is guaranteed by definition through github commits, pull requests, bug tracking.
However, we will create a website containing information about the progress and the status of the development.
Release of a usable version able to show a learning journey from a couple of different online e-learning courses but only one LMS.
This proposal is designed to work in tandem with the funded mini-app <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382026>
The "1st universal E-learning connector" doesn't have any integration with Atala PRISM, the learning data are simply stored on Cardano and not displayed on any device.
On the other side, this proposal, "Lifelong Learning certif+AtalaPRISM" will take as input any learning data coming from a learning management system (LMS).
SDG Rating
SDG goals:
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
SDG subgoals:
4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
Key Performance Indicator (KPI):
4.4.1 Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill
#proposertoolsdg
