The administrators at the University of Memphis planned to use iClicker Insights to identify students with troubling attendance patterns so that they could attempt to intervene before the student fell too far behind in their course(s). They also planned to review iClicker attendance data at the end of the semester to identify student attendance patterns associated with poor class performance and develop a plan to proactively address in future semesters.  View the attached case study to learn more. ... View more

Connecting with students online is easy when you’re doing something fun together. With iClicker, you can host online games that will help build a sense of community in your classroom while helping students master key concepts. Join iClicker training specialist Lindsey Thomas for a demonstration of the many different types of games you can play with your students during your live class sessions. We hope you join us with a cold beverage, a tasty snack, and will take the opportunity to participate as a “contestant” (aka student) using the iClicker student app.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording ... View more

Natalie Dougall, Faculty Advocate and iClicker Trainer, discusses best practices for onboarding your students with iClicker in a virtual classroom. She shows how you can incorporate iClicker into your course with minimal fuss, provides methods for getting students started with the iClicker student app, and shares some icebreaker activities that get students comfortable in your class and using iClicker.     Access the recording! Watch Recording ... View more

ON-DEMAND Instructors who had been using iClicker Classic in face-to-face classes can seamlessly transition to a virtual classroom without having to switch to new software. Senior Client Relationship Specialist Kelly Morrow shows iClicker Classic users how to enable the iClicker student app in their course settings and explains to students the steps to switch from physical clickers to the iClicker student web/mobile app.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording     Lindsey Thomas   Training and Documentation Manager   Kelly Morrow   Senior Client Relationship Specialist ... View more

ON-DEMAND iClicker Learning Solutions Specialist Alana Craig hosts a special iClicker Cloud instructor training webinar, which covers the nuts and bolts of setting up your iClicker Cloud account and course, downloading the software, and using the software for polling, quizzing, and attendance in a virtual classroom.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording ... View more

Exciting Summer/Fall 2019 Updates       Download Now   Manage distractions & mitigate multitasking in your classroom with new feature options, tailored to your technology choices. With the new iClicker Cloud 5.0 desktop software, all your in-class tools are in one place, which means more time for teaching. Getting started has never been this easy. See the onboarding improvements we’re making for Fall.     Classroom distractions have met their match. Meet iClicker Focus and Remote-Only courses.   Getting the most out of valuable face-to-face time can be challenging with busy students multitasking and the various distractions in play during class time. So we’re introducing a few new features to manage classroom distractions this year, with flexible technology options that allow you to choose what’s right for your classroom.     iClicker Focus Beta testing in Fall 2019, available January 2020 We know that many instructors would like the increased functionality that comes with a mobile student engagement app, but can have concerns about the use of mobile phones in the classroom. Enter iClicker Focus. With Focus, you can:   Reduce distractions & multitasking Gain insight into engagement in your class Promote student self-regulation behaviors   By Spring of 2020, instructors will have the option to designate any course to run as a “Focused Class” via their course settings and choose an allowed level of device usage. Focus provides insight for instructors and students around engagement in class via post-class reporting.     Remote-Only Courses Now live! Now in iClicker Cloud, instructors have the choice to specify that students only use iClicker remotes in their course. Our new Remote-Only mode allows instructors to disable the use of mobile devices in the classroom - students, however, will still have access to all iClicker Reef data in their app.       We’re rolling out the welcome mat. Whether instructor or student, we’ve improved our processes to ensure that everyone has a smooth start.   Instructor Onboarding Improvements—Coming in August   This fall, iClicker begins the process of rolling out onboarding systems improvements. Our sights are set on making it even easier to control enrollments to match LMS rosters and, in the near future, for instructors to create courses in iClicker Cloud. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!   Student Onboarding Improvements—Coming in Fall Students want easy, so we’re bringing it. We're improving the student onboarding experience, making it easier for students to sign up and get started in your course. ... View more

All Your Tools In One Place, More Time For Teaching Starting a class session and running activities using iClicker is now quicker, easier, and more intuitive.     Download Now           "What’s New in iClicker Cloud 5.0?" Learn More Engage your students using the desktop software for in-class activities. "The iClicker Cloud desktop software is your hub for in-class activities. Polling, quizzing, and attendance are streamlined into one, simplified toolbar. The desktop software contains all the you need to see your attendees, view participation, and grade your questions during class." Sign-in to the instructor website to access course data, anytime, anywhere. "Tasks commonly completed outside of class, such as roster management and grading past sessions, are now exclusively available at the instructor website. Links to these features are available within the desktop software." See iClicker Cloud 5.0 in Action     Try it out! Download the new iClicker Cloud 5.0     Download Now     Note: Students using iClicker Reef on a mobile device should update to the most recent version of the app for the best experience. Students using iPhones are strongly encouraged to update to version 5.2.3 of iClicker Reef (released Feb 28).   iClicker Cloud 5.0 is a new, separate version of the desktop software. All users will need to download the Full version of 5.0 (even if you have already installed iClicker Cloud 4.6 or the Beta version of 5.0).   iClicker Cloud 5.0 is a required update for Fall 2019 courses. You’ll have until mid-August to make the switch, so you can continue using your current version of iClicker Cloud (4.6) for your summer courses. ... View more

Enhanced Grade Sync | Release 4.6   Support for Blackboard and Canvas available this Fall with more coming soon.     Download Now   iClicker's easy-to-use multi-column grade sync experience provides instructors much more flexibility in setting up and syncing grades to their LMS. With this update, instructors will be able to sync grades for individual sessions or as a combined total, as well as sync session points rather than percentage.     Changes to the Instructor Website | Release 5.0 Version 5.0 will launch exciting changes to the iClicker Cloud instructor website that are currently available in preview mode, including the ability to view or edit session details and grades from the new Session History section. Some of the significant updates include: A simplified Gradebook will summarize grade totals only. Individual session details can still be accessed under Session History. New Class Sessions will allow you to switch between polls and quizzes in a single session without prompting students to re-join your session. Class sessions will also be integrated with taking Attendance so you will no longer need to launch separate Attendance sessions. Simply start your class and Attendance will automatically run.   All Activities... in One Session | Release 5.0 Polling, quizzing and attendance will soon be launched from a single iClicker Cloud session, making it easier for instructors to conduct in-class activities and for students to participate in polls, quizzes and attendance. Simple, Elegant Instructor Interface | Release 5.0 We are excited to be developing a more modern and streamlined experience for instructors in both the desktop software and the instructor website. Set to go live in January 2019, the new user interface will launch a fresh design and improvements to window management so instructors can focus less on our software and more on in-class activities.   Video Link : 2496   ... View more

Expanded Student Study Capabilities   NEW! Digital flashcards Students can easily create and curate flashcards around concepts they most need to practice and review to create a more focused, customized study experience, right from their mobile devices.       Download Now     Modernized and streamlined instructor options   NEW! Run and manage polling session and class presentation from mobile devices Instructors no longer have to be tethered to a desktop. Polling session and your presentation can be managed including monitoring and sharing results, tracking which students have responded and reviewing questions in the active polling session, all from a mobile device. PLEASE NOTE: The iClicker Cloud Mobile instructor app requires iClicker Cloud 4.2.2 or newer       PREVIEW! New elegant, modern instructor web experience Instructors can preview the modern, streamlined navigation and design of the iClicker web experience going live for Fall 2018. Instructors can get a jumpstart on familiarizing themselves with the new, easy-to-use experience prior to the mandatory update for Fall courses.     Enhanced instructor communication with iClicker product team   NEW! Give Feedback button When using the new modern, streamlined preview experience, instructors can provide direct feedback to the iClicker product team via the “Give Feedback” button in the left navigation bar making it even easier for instructors and technologists to provide insight and feedback on the iClicker experience.   Improved accessibility for students and instructors We continue to make steady progress to ensure that iClicker and its supporting applications are aligned to WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards as closely as possible. The March 2018 release includes numerous screen-reader and keyboard accessibility improvements to the instructor and student websites.   ... View more

Opportunities for distraction in college classrooms for students - especially in 2019 - is plentiful. Social media, cat memes and short attention spans all contribute to the problem. Join veteran iClicker user and Physics instructor, Dr. Brian Geislinger, as he talks about the importance of minimizing distractions in the classroom and learn how he works to manage them - and increase engagement - in his own classroom.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording ... View more

With average attrition costs at nearly $10 million per institution, improving student retention rates, especially from the first to second year, can have a significant impact on institutional budgets and resource allocation. Unfortunately, those looking to combat the issue with data-informed interventions often quickly realize that while there may be lots of data, actionable insights are few and far between. Moreover, it can be difficult to know which data, when acted upon early, will most positively impact student retention and success.   In sum: Water, water everywhere!   If trying to make heads or tails of the gigs of data your students generate seems like a lost cause, fret not. Below, we've distilled our data collection philosophy to three simple strategies you can use to shape how your campus gathers and utilizes this info for maximum impact and minimum stress. The Key Three: Early, Easy, and Systematic   1. Early Data Collection It is currently common practice for many institutions to focus on mid-term grades and first-semester GPAs to trigger interventions with first-year students. However, changing the trajectory of the student experience after 8 or 15 weeks can be overwhelmingly difficult, especially when the issue is academic. Students establish academic habits and behaviors as well as social circles and involvement patterns during the first few weeks. They also experience challenges, including a tougher academic environment, homesickness, increased freedom, and more.   While the consequences of these foundational experiences and behaviors may not be seen right away, research (Woosley, 2003) has shown that students' initial college experiences, especially within the first few weeks, are linked to long-term outcomes. Therefore, the first step in improving the impact of our first-year student data is the development and use of targeted early indicators.   Like red flag systems of the past, early indicators signal issues may need to be addressed. Unlike those first systems, however, today's early indicators go beyond simply lighting flares to identifying patterns and behaviors that need to be addressed at both the class and individual levels. Done right and your early indicators prompt early interventions—giving your support resources time to make an impact within that crucial time frame before midterm reports.   2. Easy Data Collection Another common obstacle institutions face when it comes to first-year students is capturing full and complete data. You know what we mean—not all faculty submit midterm grades or attendance records. Not all courses use learning management systems. Not all students complete surveys. And no one appreciates new requirements and systems that create additional tasks to generate data.   To overcome this obstacle, we need to get creative and make data collection easy—and most importantly, part of the workflows already taking place. For instance, taking class or event attendance does not have to be a manual task. Tools that allow students to log into a course can take the load off of faculty. Or better yet, digital classroom engagement tools (e.g., polls, quiz questions, etc.) can be used to automatically record attendance. Surveys, too, can be streamlined or shortened, incorporated into first-year seminars, put into simple tools, and more. Additionally, survey data can be linked with other data sources so that questions don’t have to be repeated.   In sum: simplifications to data collection not only decrease the workload on data providers, they can also improve the quality of the data by standardizing data sources and removing opportunities for human error.   3. Systematic Data Collection Finally, our third strategy for improving the impact of first-year student data is to be systematic and strategic about the data collected and used. While conversations about big data push our desire for digits to ever growing heights, it is becoming increasingly apparent that not all data is equally useful. As T.S. Eliot laments in Choruses from the Rock, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" It's time to get that knowledge back.   Research has unearthed a plethora of key issues related to student success and retention in one way or another—issues like academic performance, social integration, financial means, motivation and class attendance, to name a few. A systematic approach requires thinking about these issues holistically—ensuring they are covered—but also simply—eliminating duplications. Some issues may be measured through easy tools (e.g., attendance through a classroom engagement system). But some issues, such as commitment and motivation, may need to come directly from the student on a survey. Once the data elements and sources are put in place, the data needs to be integrated so that individual elements are placed in a broader context. Class attendance issues may prompt different inventions when placed alongside other concerns such as finances or homesickness. Thus, to make an impact, an institution needs a systematic approach including a variety of tools to easily collect and integrate a set of focused data.     Overall, big data alone won’t solve the first-year student retention issue. To make an impact, data must be received early, gathered and analyzed easily, and acted upon in a systematic manner.   Looking for additional guidance on how these strategies can be implemented using the data your campus is currently working with? Check out iClicker Insights for more information on how we make it easy to gather and intervene on the most impactful early insights.   Visit iClicker Insights ... View more

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 14, 2015 New Platform Enables Faculty and Instructional Designers to Discover and Use Affordable, High-Quality Content Powerful curation tools catalog institutional resources, including OER, to make free and low-cost content available to students LOS ALTOS, CALIF. (October 14, 2015) — Intellus Learning, formerly known as Ace Learning Company, announced today the launch of a new platform designed to help faculty discover, review and use the abundant digital resources, including Open Educational Resources (OER), that are available within their colleges and universities. Instructional designers can use the platform to more quickly discover content and track its use in order to accelerate and improve course development—and reduce the cost of materials for students. Because Intellus Learning has fully integrated with leading LMS providers, the platform also offers rich analytics to help faculty and institutional leaders understand how students use and engage with content. Over the past year, Intellus Learning has worked with twenty-four institutions and systems, including a California State University campus, Indiana University and Western Governors University. “The average annual cost of materials for full-time students is now over $1,000. Intellus Learning is helping faculty at one of our leading campuses better utilize Open Educational Resources (OER) and digital library resources with the goal of improving the affordability of education for our students,” said Gerry Hanley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology Services at California State University, who oversees the system’s Affordable Learning Solutions initiative. “By providing greater visibility into most content resources, we can support faculty in their course development process and increase the real-time data available to instructional designers and faculty.” In 2012, the 3,793 academic libraries in the U.S. spent over $1.5 billion on electronic serial subscriptions and on e-books, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. During the same year, those libraries had 253 million e-books. However, student surveys continue to find that cost and affordability are a major reason why students do not purchase assigned course materials. “Despite billions in investment to create free, digital resources, much of the high quality OER available and existing institutional licensed content is underutilized on campuses globally,” said David Kim, Intellus Learning Founder and CEO. “We hope to unlock these investments by helping institutions and faculty easily access existing assets, evaluate what works, and personalize the learning process to increase college completion with an eye towards affordability long-term.” Michael Horn, coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, has also joined the company as an Advisor. “Using real-time feedback, Intellus is bringing state-of-the-art technology to bear on the instructional design process to foster continuous improvement and a more affordable and successful student pathway,” said Horn. “This is just the beginning of the transformational changes that will impact the industry longer-term.” ### About Intellus Learning (www.intelluslearning.com): Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter. Media Contact: Ted Eismeier, ted@whiteboardadvisors.com ... View more

New features provide real-time insight into how students engage with course content to inform instructional design and link content to outcomes LOS ALTOS, CALIF. (June 30, 2016) — Intellus Learning announced today the launch of new content analytics features that will help educators understand how students are engaging with digital course materials and open educational resources. The platform enables faculty and instructional designers to access granular data, in real time, to track how and when students are engaging with academic content during their studies. Surveys continue to show that cost is a leading reason why students do not purchase assigned textbooks and course materials. To level the playing field and reduce the cost to students, institutions are now using content analytics to maximize affordable academic resources that align with course-level learning objectives. Faculty and instructional designers can leverage these insights to match students with engaging, relevant content, improving student experience and outcomes. “Affordability is a crucial priority for us at the CSU system, so we’ve undertaken efforts to help faculty use OER and digital content more effectively,” said Vice Provost Dennis Nef of California State University Fresno. “Despite increased investments of time and money in digital content and OER, most faculty and instructional designers have little understanding of how students navigate or respond to individual content items. The Intellus analytics layer brings us one step closer to unbundling content by enabling us to curate and select only from resources that are both instructionally relevant and also highly engaging for students, and better understand how students use that content.” “We know that student engagement increases as we align course goals and design to industry best practices,” said Matthew Gunkel, Group Manager for eLearning Design & Services and Architect for eLearning Technology at Indiana University. “The platform Intellus provides allows faculty invaluable insights that can directly inform course design and improve course quality over time.” While colleges and universities are awash in digital content, faculty and instructional designers have not previously been able to evaluate how students respond to individual content items, such as library and publisher content, OER, and digital course materials embedded in the LMS. With the advent of Intellus Analytics, faculty and instructional designers are able to evaluate course structure and content based on course-level learning objectives and differentiate content selections based on student preferences and abilities. “With the vast array of instructional resources available to educators to support instruction, faculty and instructional designers often face an overwhelming task in selecting and curating content,” said David J. Kim, founder and CEO of Intellus Learning and an expert in the application of analytics in digital asset management and search marketing. “Our new analytics layer enables intelligent curation that considers relevance and student engagement, helping faculty pinpoint the resources that will have the greatest impact.” In partnership with many institutions, Intellus Learning has now indexed over 45 million online learning resources (e.g., articles, books, videos, and digital content items) spanning major OER repositories, library archives, and publisher and institutional databases. Last fall, Intellus Learning launched a new platform designed to help faculty discover, review, and use the abundant digital resources, including OER, that are available within their colleges and universities. — About Intellus Learning (www.intelluslearning.com😞 Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter. ... View more

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (PRWEB) JANUARY 17, 2017 Macmillan Learning today announced the acquisition of Intellus Learning, an educational platform as a service company that gathers information across institutions to help faculty and administrators find and evaluate the best, most affordable digital content for each learner while providing actionable data on course engagement and success. Using a patented approach to machine learning, Intellus indexes the millions of content learning objects in use at an institution and provides real-time analytics on student usage. By organizing the wealth of digital learning assets owned or licensed by the institution, the platform provides transparency to all stakeholders to better inform resource allocation and instructional design. Commenting on the partnership, Macmillan Learning CEO Ken Michaels said, “Our customers are rightfully focused on providing the most affordable learning experience that engages students and lifts their performance, while providing early student retention transparency. Finding the right mix of content and tools that answers both teaching and institutional objectives can be challenging. This partnership will facilitate the alignment of teaching objectives with administrative goals and student preferences, while not sacrificing quality instruction or diminishing student outcomes.” The National Center for Education Statistics states that university libraries spend an estimated $2.6 billion on academic resources. Filtering the massive amounts of content in use at colleges and universities is complex and leads to disjointed approaches to content and budget management. “Intellus’s platform surfaces the best learning tools for students by matching teaching and learning objectives to all available materials. It is incredibly powerful,” said Susan Winslow, Managing Director for Macmillan Learning. “At Macmillan Learning, our goal has always been to provide the best educational content and tools for educators. Intellus allows us to continue that work while supporting institutional budgetary and retention goals.” Founded in 2011, Intellus has indexed over 50 million online learning resources such as books, articles, videos, and digital content items by spanning library archives, publisher and institutional databases, as well as major open educational resource (OER) repositories. “Our platform provides greater visibility for educators so they can better control each course outcome,” said Intellus founder and CEO, David Kim. “That is our mission: to make teaching and learning easier for faculty by providing a personalized and affordable learning experience for students.” The Intellus platform is already being used at a variety of institutions, including California State University. Gerry Hanley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology Services at California State University stated, “One of our innovative campuses adopted Intellus in 2015 to enable their faculty to explore and choose the more affordable and high-quality learning materials for their students. The Intellus platform has helped us better support CSU faculty to quickly and easily discover potential course materials from a wide range of publisher, library, and open educational resources collections, which in turn provides our faculty more time to choose the best materials for our students’ successful learning.” “I’m thrilled about the partnership and the opportunity to work with the Macmillan Learning team,” said Mr. Kim. “With the backing of a commercial publisher, we can accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission for more students.” Intellus Learning will work alongside the Macmillan Learning team, with Mr. Kim reporting directly to Mr. Michaels. # # # About Macmillan Learning:  Macmillan Learning improves lives through learning. Our legacy of excellence in education continues to inform our approach to developing world-class content with pioneering, interactive tools. Through deep partnership with the world’s best researchers, educators, administrators, and developers, we facilitate teaching and learning opportunities that spark student engagement and improve outcomes. We provide educators with tailored solutions designed to inspire curiosity and measure progress. Our commitment to teaching and discovery upholds our mission to improve lives through learning. To learn more, please visit our website or see us on Facebook, Twitter, or join our Macmillan Community. About Intellus Learning:  Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of the institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter. About the California State University:  The California State University is the largest system of senior higher education in the country, with 23 campuses, 49,000 faculty and staff and 474,600 students. Half of the CSU’s students transfer from California Community Colleges. Created in 1960, the mission of the CSU is to provide high-quality, affordable education to meet the ever changing needs of California. With its commitment to quality, opportunity, and student success, the CSU is renowned for superb teaching, innovative research and for producing job-ready graduates. Each year, the CSU awards more than 105,000 degrees. One in every 20 Americans holding a college degree is a graduate of the CSU and our alumni are 3 million strong. Connect with and learn more about the CSU at the CSU Media Center. ... View more

Algorithms can help faculty discover and select open educational resources for a course, map the concepts covered in a particular text, generate assessment questions and more. By David Raths 10/04/17 The basic definition of machine learning is that it allows a computer to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. One obvious example: the way a Netflix algorithm learns our TV-watching habits to make suggestions of other movies we might like. We come into contact with dozens of such machine-learning algorithms every day. Algorithms are even starting to make an impact on university campuses, taking on time-consuming tasks to ease faculty and administrator workloads. For example, RiteClass's predictive admissions platform uses machine learning to produce a "Prospective Student Fit Score" by ingesting data about current students and alumni. The Fit Score will determine how similar (or different) a prospective student is to current students and alumni, according to the company, helping institutions make data-driven admissions decisions. And in support of faculty members, several efforts are underway to use machine learning to analyze the contents of open educational resources (OER) for their fit in a particular course. Algorithm-Assisted Content California State University, Fresno has been urging its faculty members to seek out appropriate no- or low-cost course materials. The problem: Replacing costlier course material with appropriate OER content is time-consuming, said Bryan Berrett, director of the campus's Center for Faculty Excellence. To ease the process of selecting material, CSU-Fresno has been piloting an analytics solution from Intellus Learning, which has indexed more than 45 million online learning resources and can make recommendations of matching OER content. "If I am teaching an English course and I have a standard textbook, I can type the ISBN number into Intellus," explained Berrett. "Broken down by chapter, it will say here are all the OER resources that are available that match up with that content." The faculty member can then upload the resources directly into the course learning management system. Intellus says it can also index the millions of learning objects in use at an institution and provide real-time analytics on student usage. A similar homegrown effort at Penn State University has branched out into new directions, said Kyle Bowen, director of education technology services. PSU's BBookX takes a human-assisted computing approach to enable creation of open source textbooks. The technology uses algorithms to explore OER repositories and return relevant resources that can be combined, remixed and re-used to support learning goals. As instructors and students add materials to a book, BBookX learns and further refines the recommended material. Bowen explained that the work was inspired to some degree by more nefarious uses of machine learning. Looking at examples of researchers using algorithms to generate fake research papers begged the question: If you can do something like that to create fake research papers, could you use it to create real ones or real content? "What better problem to try to solve than looking at open content?" he said. "How could we simplify or expedite the process of generating a textbook or a textbook replacement?" In the process of training machines to search for appropriate content, the PSU researchers discovered that algorithms often surface content the faculty member may not have known about. Even if you are an expert in a topic area, there are still elements of the field you may not be as familiar with, and the algorithm is not biased by knowledge you already have. Describing the process of fine-tuning the algorithm, Bowen said it works less like a Google search and more like a Netflix recommendation. "With a Google search, you provide a term, and if you don't like the results you change your terms. Here you are changing how the machine is thinking about those terms," he explained. "You are telling it 'more like this, less like that,' and you keep iterating. It begins to focus on what you are looking for and what you mean by that term. It goes by the meaning the faculty member is trying to get to." Next Steps Although PSU is continuing its work on the OER textbook project, Bowen said, "What we uncovered was that using this machine learning approach to generate textbooks was potentially one of the least interesting things we could do with it." The institution's data scientists have moved into three other areas with the intent of taking on even more complex issues: 1) Prerequisite knowledge. In terms of sequencing how material is presented, machine learning might help instructors understand the prerequisite knowledge a person would need in order to understand a particular body of text. "We want to make sure that as you are coming into a class, the prerequisite knowledge has already been introduced," Bowen said. "You could do that yourself by charting out the concepts to see how they relate across the material. But in this case, the machine can more effectively construct concept maps and identify disconnects inside of them." 2) Generating assessment questions. Anybody who has crafted a multiple-choice midterm or final exam knows how challenging it is to make it representative of the work and create distractors to effectively assess understanding of a topic. PSU is working on a prototype algorithm that, given an OER chapter or a textbook, can suggest multiple-choice assessments. "This gets into an area of machine learning called adversarial learning, which comes out of security. It is how the computer identifies spam messages," Bowen said. Spam e-mails aren't real e-mails, although they are trying to look like they are — they are trying to exploit a vulnerability. With the creation of a spam filter, machine learning identifies pattern matches. "We want to do the opposite," he said. "We want to identify things that don't fit the pattern but look like they would. What are some things that might exploit gaps in someone's knowledge? What we have found is the machine creates really difficult multiple-choice tests. It shows very little mercy." PSU has not yet begun testing this solution with faculty. "It is important to explain that it is not the goal to replace what the person is doing, but rather to assist the faculty member," Bowen said. The goal would not be to have the machine generate multiple choice assessments on the fly, but to help a faculty member craft a multiple choice test that is representative of the material and help simplify the process of creating those tests, he added. The same is true with prerequisite knowledge. It is not to replace the work being done by faculty members, but to support them as they think about prerequisite knowledge. 3) Brainstorming with your computer. A third conceptual area PSU is working on is letting the computer help you brainstorm. "We all have friends who are really smart and who we go to to bounce ideas off of," Bowen said. Such a friend might ask if you have thought about other concepts. "You can do that with your computer," he explained. If you are thinking about a topic, the machine can say, "well based on that, have you thought about x?" It can help you brainstorm an activity and also form or prototype ideas and come out with a concept map or outline that helps you explore new areas. "So although the original algorithm was designed to generate texts, when we look at it, these three areas are potentially higher value problems to work on. We have moved away from our original research to look at how we can provide more targeted assistance on pain points in developing OER material." About the Author David Raths is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer focused on information technology. He writes regularly for several IT publications, including Healthcare Informatics and Government Technology.  ... View more