Curator Solutions Recommendation Engine

Designing engaging courses to meet the needs of all learners is complicated, stressful, and time-consuming for teachers. Moreover, increasing demands on teacher's time clearly demonstrate the need for high-quality, standards-aligned course design tools that help teachers save without compromising efficacy. K-12 educators face numerous barriers that impede their ability to create effective learning environments that meet the diverse and evolving needs of their learners. Current methods of content creation and curricula design are static and preclude the curricular adaptation that is necessary to accommodate individual  learner needs and learning styles. This functional barrier is particularly challenging for teachers who are navigating course and content creation that must be equally effective in-person, hybrid, and in fully online environments. COVID-19 exacerbated challenges and inequities in K-12 education that existed prior to the pandemic, particularly among underrepresented, underserved, and low-income communities. 

Teachers spend an average of 7 hours per week of unpaid personal time searching for instructional resources. Growing class sizes add to the pedagogical complexities facing 21st century educators and further burden the already overworked teachers and stretch the availability of resources. Increased class size is a significant concern in online classes where rosters often exceed 50 students or more.

Pedagogical best practice dictates that effective instruction is learner-centered and engaging. Products currently available in K-12 education, however, take a one-site-fits-all approach to teaching. Teachers are asked to create a multi-modal curriculum and learning experiences with limited instructional support and resources. Current tools fail to account for the individual learning styles and learning needs that differ for each student. The resulting curriculum is often ineffective and students, particularly those who need personalized support, are left behind. 

One of the biggest areas of inequality in education is centered around access to student learning materials, and many students fall behind when they are forced to miss classes, or have medical or developmental problems that make traditional learning difficult to impossible. The Curator platform creates a seamless learning experience that allows students to access  learning materials in the modality needed in the moment.

Curator analyzes and synthesizes existing learning data to inform instructional design, make modality recommendations, deliver content and ensure standards are met and students achieve content mastery. As Curator evolves it will become increasingly personalized and prescriptive, accelerating the pace at which educators can address learning challenges. Using ethical AI, Curator’s Recommendation Engine will become increasingly responsive to the individual needs of teachers and learners. The platform will enable both teachers and students to select from a variety of learning options based on their content modality preferences. Over time, the recommendation engine will learn student preferences and make suggestions based on the modality that works best for the learner. Recommendations can also be driven by teacher inputs. For example, if a student is struggling with a lesson, the teacher can make an alternative option that addresses the same standard using a different modality immediately available to the student.

Curator Solutions has the opportunity to leverage machine learning algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to enhance the user experience of the Curator Solutions platform for teachers, students, and administrative users. The Curator platform has yet to fully realize its potential to leverage predictive analytics within its workflow of content creation, curation, and deployment. Through a recent partnership, Curator Solutions now has the ability to link all learning modules and outcomes to an exhaustive set of formal learning standards. Building upon this new feature, Curator Solutions is positioned to leverage this data to provide real time and dynamic suggestions to content curators through a proprietary, data-driven recommendation system described within this proposal. This feature will simplify the user experience, shorten the time it takes teachers to curate content, and help align content to learners’ individualized preferences. 

With this funding, Curator will develop a minimum-viable product (MVP)  that can be further developed for deployment within the Curator Learning platform. The human-centered recommendation engine, inclusive of tagging for modality, grade level, and subject will enable teachers to create dynamic learning experiences and engaging classrooms that are adaptive and equitably meet the needs of every learner. The engine will enhance the current Curator learning platform, save teachers time, and provide useful analytics that enable teachers to make  data-informed decisions for their students. 

The Recommendation Engine will serve teachers and students in K-12 public, private, and charter schools in rural, remote, tribal, and urban areas. 

Covid exacerbated learning gaps are most pronounced in underserved communities, particularly low-income and minoritized communities. Teachers in low-achieving districts are often tasked with closing the achievement gaps despite significant barriers including a lack of funding and resources. Curator Solutions aggressively seeks funding to support the use of the Curator Learning platform for schools that serve vulnerable populations including high-poverty schools, students with disabilities, and schools in underrepresented and underserved minority and tribal communities. The recommendation engine will be part of the platform provided to these schools free of charge. 

The Recommendation Engine has the potential to impact students in profound and meaningful ways including improving quality of life and increasing agency, academic persistence, academic self-efficacy, motivation and persistence, and curiosity while reducing stress and anxiety. Additionally, the learning experience enabled by the Engine will lead to technology-based skill building and increase tech fluency.  For teachers, the engine will contribute to increased time to focus on students, increased agency, capacity building, and increased well-being.  will recommend content based on factors including student choice, learning styles, and achievement levels. Content specifically created for students will increase engagement and positively impact grades, retention rates, and testing performance. 

Our team works closely with a diverse group of teachers and administrators to identify and respond to the unique needs of teachers and students. We co-create with our academic partners partners to ensure the content being recommended meets their needs and is community responsive. We run regular focus groups to glean additional insights and have integrated feedback loops so we can share back to our community. Many learners from low socioeconomic communities come from families with little to no formal education, meaning most would be the first in their family to complete high school and transition to college. When a spark for learning is ignited early, learners are more likely to be resilient and to persist. Creating a robust pipeline of digitally literate learners passionate about stem ensures a workforce that is prepared for the 21st century. 

Curator Solutions is an EdTech company created to eliminate barriers to education through engaging multimodal content. Curator’s mission is to help educators provide learners with the best content to reach their best potential outcomes. Curator Solutions Educate is a software platform that provides a suite of accessible, equitable, and technology-driven teaching and learning tools so that learners can be better prepared for education and workforce success.

We are applying to Solve because we believe we would greatly benefit from interaction and advice from others in the digital space. We have carefully designed a product that will make a significant impact on education and improve the lives of learners across the globe.  While we are seeking funding, we are also excited about the opportunity to learn from industry leaders and experts, and believe Solve would be very beneficial to our company as we move forward. We have identified our strengths and weaknesses, and have a clear vision for the near and distant future needs.

There are a number of learning management systems (LMS) available for use in K-12 education including Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, and PowerSchool. These LMS platforms support basic course creation, but lack many of the features and functions of the Curator platform with the added recommendation engine. The Curator recommendation engine is a novel tool that will provide an educational platform that is uniquely designed to effectively educate each individual student. One of the most significant limitations of LMS platforms is the level of technical skills required of educators. Teachers have varying levels of experience and comfort using technology and current LMS platforms can be overly complex and difficult to navigate. The Curator platform offers an easy to use and intuitive toolkit that empowers teachers to create robust course materials with little or no advanced technological skills. 

One of the biggest areas of inequality in education is centered around access to student learning materials, and many students fall behind when they are forced to miss classes, or have medical or developmental problems that make traditional learning difficult to impossible. The Curator platform creates a seamless learning experience that allows students to access  learning materials in the modality needed in the moment.

One year- Partner with schools in low-income areas to create partnerships and serve at least 10,000 students.

Five year- Continue building partnerships and serve at least 1 million students.

Additionally, our overall goals are:

• Increase the number of teachers trained
• Increase the number of administrators trained
• Increase the number of schools on platform
• Increase the number of districts on platform
• Increase the number of tools integrated
• Increase revenue
• Increase the number of support calls received and resolved
• Increase the number of lol-SES schools on the platforms
• Increase the number of partners engaged
• Increase the number of public speaking 
• Increase the number pieces of content tagged
• Increase the number of students on the platform

Our monitoring team will continue to use a mixed-method approach to monitoring goals using real-time quick sprints, feedback loops, focus groups, and development team assessments.

• The outcomes we will measure include:
• More students passing STEM classes
• More girls persisting in STEM
• More students of color persisting in STEM
• Improved graduation rates
• Students better prepared for college
• Increase course completion rates
• Increased course participation
• Increased sense of belongingness
• Increased student engagement
• Improved student grades
• Reduced dropout rate

The recommendation engine will utilize machine learning algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. 

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging are woven throughout everything we do at Curator Solutions. Unequal access to educational materials inevitably leads to an inequitable distribution of opportunity and  resources, which in turn impacts students at every stage of their learning journey and into early adulthood as they leave school to enter higher education or the workforce. Without a level playing field, those who need it most will lack the educational foundation necessary to thrive. The Curator platform breaks down barriers and enables all students to access highly engaging, digitally enhanced learning experiences that build the 21st century skills necessary for academic and workforce success.

Curator Solutions incorporates diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging into every aspect of decision-making from addressing student needs to product design. Our goal is to go beyond creating educational tools to create a learning ecosystem that increases equity in student outcomes while improving confidence,  fostering agency, increasing comprehension and mastery, and sparking a genuine love for learning. The education system in the U.S. is fundamentally based on socioeconomic factors, and students in underserved and underrepresented communities often lack access to the quality educational material that meets their needs and prepares them for academic success. The Curator learning platform is a customizable platform built to address every learner, every learning style,  and any learning modality. Educational materials can be tailored to address different learning styles as well as achievement levels and remediation. 

One of the biggest areas of inequality in education is centered around access to student learning materials, and many students fall behind when they are forced to miss classes, or have medical or developmental problems that make traditional learning difficult to impossible. The Curator platform creates a seamless learning experience that allows students to access  learning materials in the modality needed in the moment.

Finally, the team at Curator is intentionally composed of a diverse group of individuals that bring the perspective of all humans to the table. Our team is made up of women, minorities, and graduates of various school systems. We highly value diverse perspectives, and deeply value the opinions of all employees and contractors. 

Curator Solutions provides content recommendation to K12 educators and administrators. Effective content recommendation increases engagement and efficacy of learning for many student populations that otherwise are challenged. This leads to better outcomes and more funding for schools struggling to address individual student needs. Administrators can make decisions about their entire curriculum and content suite, educators can quickly personalize learning, and students can benefit from a more inclusive learning experience all facilitated through the Educate platform. Curator works through schools, government agencies, grants, and nonprofits to implement holistic content solutions at a cost of between 5-25k depending on the size of the institution. 

The Curator team has a deep background in fundraising, and will continue to seek funding from a variety of sources to support current and future projects. We are acutely aware of funding limitations present in K-12 education and will continue to identify ways to help schools secure funding. Curator will partner with school administrators to help identify grants and other funding opportunities to support the implementation and use of the Curator platform beyond the project end date. Additionally, the team plans to create a sustainable funding model within K-12 Education. At a rate of $5k for smaller schools up to a maximum of $25k for larger schools, new development and technology becomes affordable and sustainable. The model has been validated by principals and administrators.

To date, the Curator team has successfully raised seed funding from VCs and Angel investors for the development of content and technology to solve complex challenges in education and workforce. Curator leadership will continue to seek funding to support and grow the Curator platform, and provide low-income schools with access to the platform at no cost.