Ananda Gunawardena (“guna”) Computer Science & David Kaufer English Carnegie Mellon University

What we bring to the project A human-centric view A machine-centric view

Salon vision

To extract and organize knowledge around small groups

What Salon is A platform that supports social learning A content-centric platform that allows deep discussion of all content related to the course A discovery platform that allows users to find other “interesting” users A platform that allows teachers to get to know their students better A platform that allows students to get to know each other A platform that protects privacy of students

What Salon is not It is not a course management system It is not an ebook platform It is not just another highlighting tool It is not a document management system

We think most educational technology systems are designed from a system centric view Do not support teacher thinking or workflow

Salon is designed with a user- centric view

Salon handles most course related tasks better

Teacher ask students to read and prepare for class No other platform supports reading like Salon does Salon tracks and records student activities Social nature of the platform encourages active participation How do you track reading with other platforms/processes? Course management systems? Learning management systems? Reading groups? Polling/surveys?

Track Reading

Teacher ask students to complete homework Salon enables small group homework completion Individually As a group How do other systems manage this process? Submitting completed homework online or on paper

Complete homework

Students have a lot of questions about the assignment Salon enables immediate clarification on the context How do other systems handle this? Discussion boards attachments Help sessions

Clarify Assignments

There are no good ways to measure student’s prior knowledge Salon enables prior knowledge detection activities How do other systems handle this? Pre course surveys Polling 1-1 meetings

Measure Prior Knowledge

Tracking the activities of students Dash board is a way to track activities of each/all student(s)

Salon is Social

People I am interested in

Current activities of those I am interested in

These people are interested in me

I manage my Salons

How to create this social connection? Click on anyone’s picture and find their interests

Salon Teacher Tools

Monitoring Class Activities

Monitoring Individual Students Thomas Manzini Performance in each unit How time spent annotations Commenting on others responses discussions Salons Created: 2 Documents uploaded: 6 Annotations Made: 56 Responses Provided: 40 Commenting on others: 42 Open Discussions: 38 Filter

Salon is research based

Tone matching dictionaries Expert humanist Usability Semantic similarity algorithms Adaptive Book technologies Scalability and performance Alex Cheek Interaction design Information design Joanna Wolfe Reading and Annotations

How learning works Eberly Center for Learning Carnegie Mellon University

Salon Technology

Salon Technology and Statistics Flexible and Scalable platform asp.net, C#, Flex Transition into Cloud Virtual Salon server php, html5, js Mobile Salon Android Tablet/phone Support ipad/iphone in the works (target date: January 2012) Statistics Current users: Documents uploaded : ~ 5637 Salons created: ~ 670 Separate Salon server Deployments: Grover City College

Funding and company Status Funded by National Science Foundation Gates Foundation CMU Spin-off Status Seed Funding by innovation works Heinz Endowment Business Relation Discussions Mc-Graw Hill HP Intel Capital Yahoo!

Thank you