X5GON Task: Learning Buddy

Well done to all students on your successful hacks. We look forward to seeing you in Paris for this highly intercollegiate event!

The aim of this hackathon is to bring together minds and ideas to build and deliver innovative and impactful solutions to real world issues such as access to education and healthcare, capacity building and knowledge exchange in developing countries.

For this final stage hackathon task from now until you reach Paris, you may reuse your existing app project created in the prior hackathon events, or you can create a new project.

For this new challenge we would like you to produce an add-on to your project using the provided X5GON OER dataset and the X5GON APIs. You may also use additional external APIs and OER from other sources.

Your project theme should still be one of the following three in line with the United Nations SDGs:

• NGO Knowledge exchange: How can we build capability through the exchange of knowledge between established and less accomplished organisations and their staff?
• Health knowledge exchange: How can we build capability where there is poor access to healthcare training and education?
• Engineering knowledge exchange: How can we build capability, equality and fairness through engineering education for all, including access to international conference coverage?

The add-on that you will develop for your app will be to introduce a “Learning Buddy”. You are welcome to develop your existing idea from your local hackathon or if have a totally different idea for what a Learning Buddy should do, we encourage you to pursue this with your project mentor. To give you some ideas of what a Learning Buddy could involve, we have suggested two ideas:

The Learning Buddy could be:

1. An automated chatbot AI that supports the learner in finding appropriate OER resources and motivates the learner to proceed in their learning effort. This Learning Buddy should use natural language to communicate with the user.

Or

1. A social network component or recommendation engine component that enables a real person that has a similar learning goal to the user to collaborate and learn with. The skill sets and interests of the users could be matched with AI methods and AI could support them in their learning task.

To give you and your team some time to prepare, we encourage you to start to develop the Learning Buddy add-on before you arrive for the Hackathon in Paris. This is especially important if you decide to pursue a new project idea. For the event in Paris, you will get access to one final additional API that you will have 24hrs to use to improve your software. During the hackathon, you will also have free credits for Microsoft and IBM cloud services to run your software on and use their NLP and AI technologies.

Your projects will be judged by our panel of experts:

• Ha Cole – CTO, Microsoft Philanthropy (Industry panellist)
• Dr Husna Ahmad OBE – ANCSSC (NGO panellist)
• Dr Louisa Zanoun – Senior Science and Innovation attache, British Embassy, Paris (Government panellist)
• Sasha Rubel – AI Programme Specialist, UNESCO (International panellist)
• Professor Kai-Uwe Kühnberger – Vice President for Research, Professor in Cognitive Science, Universität Osnabrück (Acadaemic panellist)
• Davor Orlic – COO Knowledge 4 All Foundation (X5gon)

The judging panel will be looking for a polished product and pitch. The projects will be judged based on your team’s ability to meet user needs and develop a functioning, responsive API. You will be judged on explainability, transparency and your understanding of the limitations of your data.

We hope that you all enjoy the process and chance to network with international colleagues.