SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to provide a solution for the students and schools with an urgent need for a remote learning solution. An estimated 85% of families on rural Native American reservations do not have high-speed internet access. The need for a remote learning solution is especially pressing given the COVID-19 pandemic which is requiring many schools to implement online or hybrid learning models. If students are not able to participate in these new models, it is likely that they will have substantially lower achievement levels than their peers who do have access to remote learning. The proposed project advances a technology to enable online learning without access to high-speed internet. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will advance a new system to support digital learning with lower access to high-speed internet. First, this project will explore edge computing in innovation by building a new learning management system that has intelligent edge nodes capable of providing a complete student learning experience without access to a central server. Second, it will improve pedagogical approaches in this environment, supporting digital learning across limited or no access modalities, including print-to-digital workflows. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Resesarch (SBIR) Phase II project will be in helping to close the homework gap in the United States. The homework gap has been a long simmering problem where 12 ? 17 million K-12 students do not have reliable home internet to complete digital homework. Students that could benefit the most from learning applications that require home access are disproportionately from lower-income, rural, and at-risk minority populations. While new broadband funding initiatives may make incremental improvements to the situation, millions of students in low-income and rural areas continue to be left behind. This project aims to use new advances in web technologies and intelligent agents to provide a software solution that will enable any student to participate in a complete digital homework workflow including interactive lessons, videos, and robust teacher feedback even when they have unreliable or no access to the internet. Unconnected adult learners will also benefit from the project as technical skills training including computer programming will be supported. This solution will assist in filling the key technical skill gaps in the American workforce.This SBIR Phase II project will advance a new homework management system that will support digital learning with a consistent experience for learners that are online, offline, or in degraded network conditions and on any available devices. Through an innovative offline-first distributed architecture that solves complex problems around state divergence and conflict resolution, user identity, system integrations and offline content management, this system attempts to bring equitable access to learners who have historically had limited or no access to at-home digital homework solutions. The system will utilize intelligence at the edge to facilitate effective, research-based, pedagogical approaches to improve learning outcomes and minimize teacher overhead. Pilot programs and user feedback studies, along with custom-built learning model simulators will be used to evaluate and iteratively refine the system's efficacy. The goal of this project's research and development will be the release of a production-ready, scalable homework management system that makes positive progress toward bridging the homework gap.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.