Motivation and Concept
Contents
Motivation Behind SmartUni
In the last two years, the Coronavirus pandemic has forced thousands of universities and schools across the globe to adapt their educational programs to a fully online environment. As health concerns and related government regulations made in-person study and instruction impossible, more and more aspects of school and university life were shifted into the digital sphere. Video conference calls became classrooms, dorm rooms took over from campuses as the primary location of educational activity, and e-mail and digital messaging apps replaced face-to-face conversations.
For many students, this transition was far from easy. Days that were spent in university lecture halls, joint study rooms, cafeterias, coffee shops, libraries, and recreational areas amongst dozens of peers were now spent almost entirely isolated in a dorm room or apartment. Distinctions between everyday life and academic life broke down as the bedroom became not only a place for sleep and relaxation, but also for online course meetings and other newly-digitalized aspects of university life.
The SmartUni team, as students ourselves, wanted to use our study project to create solutions to some of the key problems students like ourselves have faced during the pandemic years. With remote learning scenarios also becoming more common irrespective of the pandemic (though the pandemic certainly influenced this trend), we also understood that these problems are vital points that need to be addressed to ensure future students are able to study effectively and healthily even when not attending a physical campus. After full-group discussions at the beginning of our project year, we honed in on two principal areas of need for remote students, which we would attempt to create artificial intelligence (AI) tools to resolve – the challenge of connecting with other students in digital environments, and the challenge of maintaining a healthy life schedule when the bedroom and the classroom merge.
The Concept of SmartUni
SmartUni is intended to be a cohesive web-based application with submodules aimed at targeting two of the key issues we identify above:
Connecting to Other Students
A key challenge of a remote learning environment is the altered and more limited engagement students have with their peers. Classmates can seem to be nothing more than names in chat rooms and profile pictures in education software, and human connection becomes exceedingly difficult to establish and maintain. In fact, our team experienced this firsthand, since after only a few in-person meetings, the bulk of our project was conducted while our university was in a remote-only mode during the worser stages of the pandemic. When we were finally able to meet again in person, many of us openly and regularly remarked on the positive difference that seeing our teammates off the screen made to our feelings about the project and our social health within the team.
A more narrow area of the interpersonal connection challenge of remote learning, and the one we chose to focus on in our work this past year, is locating a peer with whom to study. Such “study buddies” can often be vital to our academic and personal health. They can help us to understand topics we struggle with and boost our confidence by giving us an opportunity to recognize our existing strengths and to acquire new ones. They also provide an invaluable social connection outside of the academic context. But in a remote learning situation, it can be more difficult to even meet these peers, much less to determine whether they would be a good study partner. For this reason, the SmartUni team developed StuddyBuddyMatch.
StudyBuddyMatch is an AI application which collects data from users related to their academic experience and goals and to their general personality. This data is then used to evaluate which users might make good study buddies for each other. For detailed information on StudyBuddyMatch and how it works, see the StuddyBuddyMatch page.
Maintaining an Effective Schedule
When students’ academic and personal lives blend together, it can be difficult to ensure that all tasks and obligations are completed and fulfilled without losing a healthy work-life balance. With the transition from one activity to another lasting no longer than the click of a button, the normal breaks throughout the day that are introduced by necessary transit times to and from campus for classes and other activities are no longer in place. It is easy for the day to instead become a long unbroken period of work, and it can be hard to determine when tasks should be done, or even how all of the tasks can be done at all. To help students in this regard, the SmartUni team developed the SmartPlanner.
The SmartPlanner is an AI-based tool which uses a user’s information about the tasks and events upcoming in their schedule to best arrange those tasks and events in the user’s calendar so that they can fulfill all of their obligations in the time allowed. Originally, the SmartPlanner was also to include functionality to support users’ general wellbeing by implementing breaks and otherwise supporting the user in maintaining a healthy balance between work and recreation. For detailed information on the SmartPlanner and how it works, see the SmartPlanner page.