LifeLine Remedial Learning

Team: Daniel Willey, Palak Walia, Spencer Gannon, Quinn Rasnick

Coaches: Jolie Raufeisen, Adam Lara, Gunnar Hoffman

Problem: In the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic, students have fallen behind in classes. As a result, they struggle to advance in further classes and develop mental health problems in response. For teachers of students who have fallen behind, the extra effort given to these students can lead to them feeling overwhelmed and contribute to burnout. While the number of students behind is expected to fall in the years following the pandemic, this problem will persist long into the future.

Solution: Our Canvas plugin will allow students to receive targeted remedial learning concurrently to the classes they are already taking, so they do not fall behind. The software will identify the specific topics within a subject that the student has fallen behind in. The software will then generate a series of long-term memory and short-term memory tests for the student. The student will take several short-term memory tests, and then a series of long-term tests to ensure they can actively recall the information. This method of testing has been shown to be more efficient than other methods. The student’s mental health will be monitored via daily mental health checks to prevent burnout, anxiety, and depression. The information from the tests and health checks will be sent to the educator edition. The teacher can then track the students progress in an efficient manner to reduce their workload. The teachers will then perform mental health checks of themselves to prevent burnout.

Market Size: The figure stated in the video and on the slides was incorrect. The figure was based of colleges that used canvas instead of all canvas users. The following is an estimate od the SAM of users using canvas. According to their website, Canvas has over 6 million users. Assuming a subscription fee of 5 dollars per individual, the SAM could be 30 million dollars. Assuming 25% of the market needs the service, a lower figure for the SAM would be 7.5 million dollars. The TAM would involve all students using an LMS, which would be higher. In the US alone, there are roughly 20 million college students and 51 million k-12 students. Assuming Canvas expands to all major LMS platforms, and that 70% of all students have an LMS, using the same 25% figure as above would yield a market of 12.425 million students. At the same price, The TAM would be 62.125 million dollars. We estimate this figure is low, due to not factoring in number of teachers.

Competition: Other Canvas plugins exist. The most direct competition would be Picmonic. Picmonic is another established remedial learning software. They have established methods, libraries, and resources compared to us. However, our mental health monitoring and long term/ short term system is unique to our software. Given the rise in awareness of mental health, we believe these features will set us ahead of our competition.

Business Model: Our business model would be a software-based subscription. Key partnerships would be with schools directly. A partnership with canvas would also be beneficial. Key relationships would be with the schools and the userbase at large. Key activities would be providing quizzes and mental health services to our customers. Our cost structure would be front end. Upfront costs for development, marketing, and servers would be large, but costs should decrease after development, and only expand with staff/servers.

Marketing and Sales:The primary method of advertisement would be to appeal directly to the schools themselves. The software would be demonstrated live and in person to school boards, directors, and principles. The Secondary method of advertising would be through social media. We would use Facebook ads and strong branding to spread influence.

Progress to Date: Currently, a high-fidelity prototype of the plugin functions has been created in Figma. We determined that we wanted to create a plugin at week 2. We determined that developing a plugin wouldn’t be feasible in the allotted timeframe, and that a high-fidelity prototype would be a better use of our time. To our knowledge, no new technology would need to be developed for this software. If given proper time and funding, this is feasible.

Future Milestones: Our goal would be to develop and launch a canvas plugin by the end of the year. Over the fall, we would secure pilot users and test the software on them. After September, we would finalize development and launch before December. Development would then begin on plugins for other LMS platforms such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Brightspace.

Built With

• figma