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Domoscio introduces Spark, its new product for Education

In the second half of 2020, Domoscio launched its new product Domoscio Spark for K-12 players.

The company, which specializes in Artificial Intelligence technologies applied to digital learning, has been meeting the challenges of L&D departments in large companies for several years with its products for individualizing learning paths and consolidating post-training achievements. In addition, the company is leading several other projects around the use of AI in the educational field. With a proven technology and a favorable context – with the current need to combine classroom and distance learning and the desire of governments around the world to provide teachers and institutions with the best possible tools – Domoscio has decided to package its offer for the K-12 market by adapting to the specificities and needs of its players.

1 – Challenges in the education sector

From elementary school to higher education, educational institutions, and, through them, society, have a major challenge to meet: guaranteeing equity of access to education while ensuring the performance of their institution and objectifying the impact of the education delivered there. The global approach to education has demonstrated its flaws. Students have their own pace of learning, their own facilities and difficulties. How then can we differentiate and individualize the pedagogical support necessary for the best development of students when a teacher has to manage a class of 20 to 30 people?

Education systems are very often based on major milestones such as examinations for passage to the next class. Beyond these exams, which represent short-term objectives, education is intended to provide students with the knowledge they need to enter adulthood and professional life. We now know how memorization works, and we know that to improve knowledge retention, we must work on both the short and long term. How can we ensure that each piece of knowledge is retained over the long term for the students?

In the classroom, teachers sometimes find it difficult to know the level of understanding of a subject for each student before the final exam. Nor are teachers necessarily aware of all the educational resources available to them to help them in their task. However, if they had been able to identify each student’s difficulties earlier and had been provided with suggested resources to address them, it would have allowed them to have students work on their gaps before the assessment was completed. How do you give teachers the information they need on a daily basis to improve the impact of their teaching?

Every child has the right to education. Unfortunately, dropping out of school is a reality that institutions are facing. Whether it is because students are not sufficiently stimulated or because the pace of programs is too fast for them, the earlier the risk of dropping out is identified, the more educational, social or administrative measures can be taken to remedy the situation. How can future dropouts be identified so that action can be taken before it is too late?

Finally, innovative approaches are becoming increasingly popular in schools around the world, such as the skills-based approach or the flipped classroom. These new methods have proven pedagogical value. However, in order to implement them properly and reap all the desired benefits, teachers must be adequately trained and equipped. How can teachers be equipped to support them in innovation and pedagogical improvement?

2 – Spark, an innovative and modular technological product

For several years now, Domoscio has been developing technologies using Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Sciences and Smart Data to better understand the learners’ needs and offer them the most suitable learning experience. Our products highlight analytics for all those involved in providing education to enable them to measure the impact of the teaching provided and give them visibility on the profile of each learner.
Spark uses the Machine Learning algorithms developed by Domoscio to model both students learning profiles and learning content to provide recommendations and information necessary for teachers and educational institutions for the successful delivery of education.

Available via APIs, it can be integrated into any educational device, regardless of the cultural context, the level of teaching or the language used. We collaborate with content editors and integrators, either to integrate one or more Spark modules into existing tools, or to develop new innovative tools based on artificial intelligence.

3 – Spark modules to address market needs

Spark is made up of 5 autonomous modules which, combined with each other or used alone, provide an answer to the needs of the educational system.

The Adaptive Assessment allows you to accurately assess the student level of knowledge for a given concept by adapting the questions asked based on his previous answers. The student is thus stimulated with questions adapted to his level and the time required for the assessment is reduced.

Thanks to Smart Tutoring, we are able to recommend to the student (or his teacher) the right educational resources to make him work on subjects for which his knowledge is not satisfactory, and to have a progression adapted to his rhythm. There are no format requirements for these resources, which can be written lessons, videos, practice exercises, group workshops, etc.

With the help of Spaced Repetition, we are able to improve the retention of a notion by stimulating the student’s memory on a subject at the right time, using the most relevant content.

The data obtained from interactions between students and educational resources allow us to identify through Content Intelligence (content analysis) the most relevant educational contents, those that have the strongest impact on the understanding and assimilation of a notion. Or, on the contrary, those that do not have the desired effect and deserve to be reworked.

Finally, Domoscio Spark receives a massive amount of information in real time about the learning path of the students and produces Learning Analytics. We are able to return this information to the teacher in the form of indicators about the students and the class. Machine Learning also allows us to group students according to their profile to make them work together if they have a similar level of mastery, to set up tutoring between students with complementary skills or even to identify potential dropouts and allow the school to offer an adapted answer to these profiles.

4 – A product that has already proven itself

Domoscio has already had the opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency and modularity of its Spark product through projects carried out for ministries of education, in France and the United Arab Emirates, and academic institutions.
In France, it is through the creation of Navi, the teachers’ assistant to teach reading and writing in 1^st grade, 2^nd grade and 3^rd grade, created as part of the innovation partnership on Artificial Intelligence. Domoscio has joined forces with Hachette, a content editor, and Beneylu, a creator of web platforms for primary school students, to meet the Ministry’s challenges.

Domoscio has also joined forces with Hatier (Éditions Hatier is a French publishing house specialized in school books) the Institut Mines-Télécom (abbreviated IMT, is a French public institution attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, dedicated to higher education and research for innovation in the fields of engineering and digital for industry) and the UNESCO Chair “Innovation Transmission Edition Numériques” to create an open and collaborative platform based on AI for 4^th grade students.
Experimental protocols carried out with our clients have demonstrated the benefits of using Spark modules, including 37% time saved on the acquisition of target concepts thanks to Smart Tutoring and 46% additional retention of concepts 3 months after the course with Spaced Repetition..

To conclude

Domoscio Spark is a modular technological product that meets the needs of players in the educational system, whether it is from an individual, an institution, a content publisher or a solution provider scale. All of them must nowadays face the acceleration of the use of digital and new technologies in education. It is therefore important to create, deploy and test tools that teachers can rely on to carry out their critical mission in current and future conditions.

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