Apple has been granted a patent (number US 12052320 B2) for a “Software Framework for Progress Tracking in a Classroom Setting.”
About the patent
The patent relates generally to a software framework configured to implement various techniques in a classroom setting. More particularly, it involves tracking and reporting information related to progress of completion of online assignments for a group of students.
Ever since the invention of audio visual (AV) devices such as televisions, projection systems, and tape decks, school districts and instructors have been incorporating materials into their lesson plans that utilize these devices to provide information to students in new and engaging ways. Instructors were not merely limited to textbooks, lectures, and written assignments.
With the advent of the information age, the Internet has opened new horizons in the classroom. Instructors can now draw from a nearly unlimited resource of information in order to create interactive lesson plans that are engaging and productive. However, Apple says the tools available to instructors when developing these lesson plans are limited.
For example, an article may provide useful background material on a particular subject. Nevertheless, the instructor may not have a good option to share the article with their students. The instructor could print out the article on paper hand-outs, which was the traditional way to distribute such materials to students. However, Apple notes that this method is wasteful and loses some of the interactive elements (e.g., animations, hyperlinks, etc.) of the article as presented online. Alternatively, the instructor could email a hyperlink for the article to each of their students to view on a computing device at home or provided by the school.
While such methods allow the students to view the article within the proper context to interact with the interactive elements embedded within the article, there’s no way for the instructor to track whether each student clicked on the hyperlink or even whether each student actually read through the entire article. Apple thinks it can do better.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “This application relates to a client-server architecture that enables progress tracking related to assignments generated by an instructor. A hand-out can include attachments that specify placeholders for hand-ins and/or activities to be performed by the student as part of the assignment. Some activities can be performed using third-party applications that implement at least a portion of a software framework that causes the applications to generate progress tracking information provided to a daemon executing in the background of a client device.
“The daemon and/or a client application interface with one or more network services to enable an instructor to utilize the progress tracking information. The network services can include a hand-out service utilized to generate hand-outs assigned to a group of students. The network services can also include a progress pipeline including a number of services configured to process progress tracking information received from a plurality of client devices.”
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