WO2017175133A1

WO2017175133A1 - Classroom activity monitoring

Info

Publication number: WO2017175133A1
Application number: PCT/IB2017/051919
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jacobus Liebenberg; Werner MERBOLD; Cornelius RAUTENBACH; Gary Pamparà
Original assignee: Jacobus Liebenberg
Priority date: 2016-04-04
Filing date: 2017-04-04
Publication date: 2017-10-12

Abstract

A learner activity monitoring system and method for monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure (1) are provided. The system can accommodate multiple learner devices (5), each associated with a learner. The software devices (5) have software applications resident therein and are configured to receive access to electronic documents containing learning material from a server (3), identify usage events that occur while the learner interacts with and/or within the software application, time-stamp identified usage events, record time-stamped usage events and store them in a device storage location, and transmit recorded event usage data to the server (3). The usage events may include any one or more of an initial initialization of the software application, closing or inactiveness of the software application, subsequent initialization of the software application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of the learning material accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring system is operating to name but a few.

Description

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY MONITORING

CROSS-REFERENCE(S) TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority from South African provisional patent application number 2016/02189 filed on 4 April 2016, which is incorporated by reference herein.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to student or learner activity monitoring in a classroom or other educational environment in which students or learners utilise personal electronic communication devices to interact with electronic learning material in a personal education framework. BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION

In this specification, even though there may be technical differences, the terms "student" and "learner" will be used interchangeably. The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has become an integral part of modern-day society. Learners need to be fluent in its use for learning, leisure and academic work. It has also become an efficient medium for finding and using information as part of the learning process and is increasingly being advantageously integrated with current learning curriculums.

It is envisaged that by utilising an effective strategy learners can be encouraged and guided to effectively utilise available ICT resources to improve their quality of work and presentation skills across all subjects. Systems and application software have been developed and implemented whereby learning material can be provided to learners by means of electronic publications (most notably ePub documents) or Portable Document Format (PDF) files which are accessible by the learners from their personal (mostly mobile) electronic devices such as tablets, smartphones, other computers, e-readers and the like. For the sake of convenience ePub, PDF and other file formats that may be used to provide educational content to learners will be referred to in what follows as "learning material". It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that numerous other file formats exist that are suitable for use with the technology described in this specification.

A notable example of an electronic learning system is the applicant's own Personal Education Framework (PEF) which enables learners and educators to conduct personalised interaction with personalised instances of learning material. The PEF enables learners to interact with the learning material from their personal electronic devices, enables educators to push learner specific or general information into learner specific instances of learning material and also enables, to a limited extent, the educator to monitor how individual learners interact with specific instances of personalised electronic learning material in order to provide the educator with more information as to the nature and duration of learner engagement with specific instances of their personalised learning material. In a broad sense, the PEF system allows learners to access learning material and additional educational content provided by the educator in a seamless manner, whereby content is automatically pushed to any of the learner devices that have the PEF mobile application installed and wherein the learner has been authenticated and authorised to access the content.

As more and more educational content is being translated into equivalent digital formats and being made available on personal learner devices which allow for a multitude of uses, it is becoming increasingly important for educators to know when learners are performing actions that are not desired, or even allowed. In most instances the personal learner device is the property of the learner concerned and as such it is not always possible or allowable for educators to restrict what a learner is allowed to do with his or her personal device. It is for example not feasible to prevent a learner from accessing the Internet by means of a web browser from his or her personal device. However in the case of expected behaviour within a learning environment, accessing the Internet or other behaviour may not be allowed, especially if there is a task that is expected to be completed by the learner or similar activity for which the educator requires learner involvement. Building on this description, there may be tasks or activities for which a learner may simply not be allowed to do anything other than an expected activity, as such behaviour would, or could, result in an unfair advantage for the given learner over other learners within a classroom or other group environment. This would for example be the case during a test, examination or other assessment of a formal or informal nature. A learner may for example be permitted to access a specific instance of learning material and the assessment itself, but not external learning material, other references or the Internet. While accessing the Internet to search for information may not be in the spirit of an assessment or even allowed, such a restriction may not be possible on a device that the learner owns. Invigilation tasks that are generally simple to enforce in a classical classroom environment may therefore be far more difficult on a digital platform.

To the applicant's knowledge current Mobile Device Management (MDM) configurations generally provide control over a mobile device (tablet or phone) by restricting what applications may or may not be installed on/or executed on a device. In general though, the scope of what the individual applications on the device do or what happens within a given application is out of the scope of MDM as the MDM technology is not able to intercept or adjust internal application logic. While conventional MDM configurations can and do restrict device functionality, such as preventing Internet access from the device, this is done on an operating system level and not within a third party application. Conventional MDM configurations therefore restrict what a device may and may not do in a very coarse manner.

The preceding discussion of the background to the invention is intended only to facilitate an understanding of the present invention. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgment or admission that any of the material referred to was part of the common general knowledge in the art as at the priority date of the application.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with this disclosure there is provided a system for monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the system including a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the learner device including:

a learning material receiving component for receiving, from a computerised server, access to electronic documents containing learning material;

an event monitoring component for identifying usage events that occur while the learner interacts with and/or within the application software;

a time stamping component for time stamping identified usage events;

an event usage data recording component for recording time-stamped usage events and storing them in a device storage location; and

a communications component for transmitting recorded event usage data to the computerised server when a communication link to the computerised server is available. Further features provide for the usage events to include one or more of a group including an initial initialisation of the software application, closing or otherwise temporary inactiveness of the software application, subsequent initialisation of the software application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of such learning material accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring component is operating.

Still further features provide for the system to include a computerised server capable of communicating with the learner device, the computerised server including:

an operational analytics component including a set of operational limitations against which usage event data may be measured;

a receiving component for receiving time-stamped usage event data from a plurality of learner devices;

an events analytics component for analysing event usage data received from learner devices against the set of operational limitations and assigning a status to each learner for which event usage data was received;

an educator component for receiving operational limitations from an educator device; and

a reporting component for reporting time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to the educator device. The disclosure extends to a system for monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the system including a computerised server capable of communicating with a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the computerised server including:

an educator component for receiving operational limitations from an educator device; and a reporting component for reporting time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to the educator device The disclosure extends to a method of monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the method being conducted at a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the method including the steps of:

identifying, with an events monitoring component of the software application, usage events that occur while the learner interacts with and/or within the application software;

time-stamping, with a time-stamping component of the software application, the identified usage events;

locally storing time-stamped usage events; and

transmitting, with a transmitting component, stored, time-stamped usage events to a computerised server when a communications link with the computerised server becomes available.

Further features include for the step of identifying the usage events to include identifying one or more of an initial initialisation of the software application, closing or otherwise temporary inactiveness of the software application, subsequent initialisation of the software application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of such learning material accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring component is operating as usage events.

The disclosure extends to a method of monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the method being conducted at a computerised server capable of communicating with a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the method including the steps of:

receiving from a plurality of learner devices, each uniquely associated with a learner, time-stamped usage event data relating to the learners' interaction with a learner device software application;

analysing, with an operational analytics component of the software application, the time- stamped usage event data taking into consideration a set of operational limitations;

assigning statuses to each learner for which event usage data was received and analysed based on a set of operational limitations against which the received usage event data was compared; and transmitting, with a reporting component, time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to one or more educator devices. Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS In the drawings:

Figure 1 is a schematic diagram showing an educational infrastructure on which aspects of this disclosure are operable;

Figure 2 is block diagram of example components of the educational infrastructure of

Figure 1 ;

Figure 3 is a flow diagram of an example method of monitoring activities of multiple learners in an educational infrastructure;

Figure 4 is a flow diagram of an individual learner events interrogation process;

Figure 5 illustrates an example of a computing device in which various aspects of the disclosure may be implemented; and,

Figure 6 shows a block diagram of a communication device that may be used in embodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION WITH REFERENCE TO THE DRAWINGS

An educational infrastructure (1 ), as shown in Figure 1 , is provided in which an educational institution such as a school or college (not shown) has a computerised server (3) that is in operative communication with a multitude of communications devices (5) accessible to, and preferably personal to, learners who are individually identifiable by the computerised server (3) by way of identification data. Identification data may include data inputted from time to time by the individual learners, license data issued by the computerised server (3) and submitted to the communications devices (5) upon initialisation of the devices (5) and updated from time to time, digital signatures uniquely associated with learner devices (5) or individual learners, or combinations or variations of the aforementioned. In the very least, the individual learners may conveniently be identified by way of a user name and unique individual password. A classroom activity monitoring system and method as described herein is operable on such an educational infrastructure (1 ). The communications devices (5) may take many different forms that will depend, at least to some extent, on the degree of sophistication of the educational institution and its learners. It is preferred that communication between the computerised server (3) and the communications devices (5) be wireless and it is envisaged that a preferred arrangement would be one in which the communications devices assume the form of the well-known electronic tablet.

The computerised server (3) and communications devices preferably operate on a cloud principle in which the computerised server (3) retains at least the majority of software, learning material and other electronic data used by the learners in an electronic data store (7). Whilst communications could take place in any conventional manner, it is envisaged that a school's premises could be set up as a Wi-Fi zone. It should be apparent to those skilled in the art that communication between the server (3) and communications devices (5) may, however, be conducted over local area, wide area or distributed networks such as the Internet, and may include a combination of wireless, wired, near-field, mobile and radio communications techniques. In general, the server (3) is configured to provide learning material to each of the communication devices (5).

The learning material or instances thereof are individually licensed to individual learners most commonly following an electronic purchase of the learning material file by the applicable learner. Naturally, to comply with copyright and electronic licensing restrictions and regulations, learning material may be encrypted by the server or a provider so as to avoid onward and unauthorised distribution thereof by the learner. Individual learners may be provided with license keys enabling them to decrypt encrypted and downloaded learning material that they have purchased or are otherwise authorised to access. In this way access and distribution of the learning material may be controlled by the computerised server. It will be apparent that the computerised server will keep records of purchased learning material and their associated licensing information and keys for each individual learner, thereby enabling learners to switch between devices without loss of access to licensed learning material or built up content. The infrastructure may also include a controller interface which could be teacher or educator facing and accessible by means of an associated application operating on an educator communications device (9), or by means of an Internet enabled platform accessible from the educator communications device (9). As will be explained in more detail below, the controller interface may enable the educator to monitor the individual interaction of a group consisting of a number of different learners, with their communication devices (5) in near real-time and, depending on the operational limitations set for a specific monitoring period, whether the individuals in the group are operating inside or outside of the given limitations. Referring to Figure 2, a block diagram illustrates an example embodiment of components of an educational infrastructure. A communication network (10) allows communication with a learner device (5) and an educator device (9). In this embodiment a single learner device (5) and a single educator device (9) are shown; however, it is understood that the infrastructure may include multiple learner devices (5) and multiple educator devices (9).

Each learner communication device (5) has a device application (51 ) operating on it through which learners are able to access and interact with the learning material through a learning material interaction component (53), which learning material they have purchased or which have otherwise been provided to them. The device application (51 ) operating on each communication device (51 ) also has an event monitoring component (55) which is configured to monitor, identify and record usage events that occur while the learner is interacting with the device application, as well as a time stamping component (57) configured to time stamp each identified usage event. Usage events may for example include any one or more of: an initial initialisation of the device application, closing or otherwise temporary inactiveness of the device application, subsequent initialisation of the device application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of such learning material that have been accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring component is operating, such as a request by the learner for an application state reset, to name but a few.

The server (3) may in turn include an event analytics component (31 ) for analysing event data built up and stored by the event monitoring components (55) of the device applications (51 ) operating on the learner communications devices (5) and communicated to the sever (3) from time to time. The event analytics component (31 ) may be provided with a set of operational limitations (33) which would determine whether or not a learner is operating inside or outside the limitations. For example, in an examination environment the limitations may specify that the learner is allowed to access documents "X" and "Y", one of which may be the actual examination paper, but no other documents available through the device application.

The server (3) may include a general learner data component (35) which may gather and analyse data relating to a group of learners who are logically related, such as in a common grade or class. A general profile (37) of such a group of learners may be generated for comparison purposes. The server (3) may further include an individual learner monitoring component (39) which may in turn include a learner profile (41 ) for a particular learner which is based on the gathered data for that learner and may be compared to the general profile (37). A learner identifier (43) for example with a login user name may be provided for identifying the learner and monitoring their resources. An updates component (45) may be provided for updating the learner profile (41 ) and a scheduling component (47) may be provided for scheduling assessments and also for altering an educator if required. The server (3) may also include an educator component (49) for communicating with one or more educator devices (9).

Educator devices (9) in turn include an interface access component (91 ) for accessing a monitoring console or interface through which monitoring of the activities of a group of learners may be conducted. In a preferred embodiment, the interface access component forms part of an educator device application (93) which is installed and operated on the educator device (9). Alternatively educator access to the monitoring interface may be achieved through an online portal which could access information directly from the server (3). Educator devices (9) may also include individual learner event interrogation components (95) for further interrogating the events recorded by individual learner devices (5). This would normally be required if an individual learner has been flagged as having conducted potentially disallowed activities.

In operation, all event data identified and recorded by device applications operating on individual learners devices are time stamped by the time stamping component and are captured to determine what the user activity within the application was. Unlike traditional MDM scenarios the device applications are not concerned with operating system specifics. Instead the event data recorded by the individual device applications relate simply to a leaner's interaction with and within the device application. As a result no changes to learning material or content from publishers or other content providers are required. This means that a learner using an ePub book, a PDF book, or even the PEF "Educator Folder" (which is a free form structure for an educator to compile themselves, adding various resources and textual content for students which may or may not be the primary or secondary source of information within a learning curriculum) will have activity events recorded, all without needing any alterations to the copyrighted information and content provided by a content producing publisher, or other third party.

Learner usage events are not only identified by the device applications on individual learner communication devices, but are also stored within the private application data storage areas on the communication device provided by the communication device operating system for the application to use, until the device application is able to communicate with the server or, in a preferred embodiment, a server application tasked with receiving and recording individual learner event data. Upon establishing a connection with the server application, all recorded usage event data recorded on a learner communication device is uploaded to the server from where it is further accessible for analysis by the events analytics component. In the event when a communications device cannot establish a network connection to the server, the recorded events accumulate on the learner device, until such time as the connection may be reestablished.

The communication devices (5) may communicate with the server (3) using a freely available network protocol called MQTT. MQTT was originally developed by IBM to allow power scarce devices to efficiently communicate to different hosts, whilst preserving battery power. Connections to a MQTT broker service, a software service running on the server (3) may be persistent, allowing connected communications devices (5) to freely communicate with the broker service through the use of a publish/subscribe mechanism. The device applications on the learner devices may then use the publish mechanism to transfer the recorded events data to the events analytics component of the server. It should be noted that the recorded events data may be transferred to the server in binary form, that is to say that the information may not be human readable and may be as small as possible to allow for fast transfer.

Using the identification and recording of usage events on the device application and the safe transferral of the recorded usage event data to the server, various applications can be implemented using the usage event data as source. One such application is a Classroom Activity Monitor (CAM). CAM itself may be designed to be a monitoring tool specifically designed for use by educators or teachers and may be available to the educator as a web- based application via an online portal provided on an educator device, or as an application operating on the educator device.

Educators may accordingly be presented with a console from which all the required functionality of the CAM may be provided to them. The main purpose of the CAM may be to use the captured, near real-time individual usage event data captured by the event monitoring components of the device applications operating on individual devices of learners belonging to a specified group such as a classroom. The information gathered by the CAM may be recorded and arranged in a database from where it may be queried by associated applications.

By way of example, and as illustrated by the flow diagram shown in Figure 3, an educator may be presented (301 ) through the console with a user interface that communicates with the server and identifies a group of associated learners currently being monitored through their respective device applications (303). The learners may be associated by means of a common or shared identifier which could, for example, relate to a specific subject, classroom, examination paper, examination session, set task or the like.

The educator may then be presented with a number of different monitoring options (305) to direct the educator towards a specific end goal. Options may for example include:

Monitoring the activity of an entire group, or groups, of students / learners;

Monitoring the activity of a specific student or learner; or

A combination of the previous two points.

Once the educator has selected a monitoring option, thereby defining criteria for which learners to monitor, the educator may then be presented with a further monitoring option (307) to monitor global usage of the device application or usage of one or more specific pieces of learning material by the selected learners. By way of further example, if learners are for example writing a test during which only the questionnaire and one other learning material document, both accessible by the learners through the device applications, may be accessed, the operational limitations will specify identifiers for the questionnaire and learning material that are allowed to be accessed.

Finally, a time-frame may be provided by the educator (309) and input into the interface within which the monitoring should be conducted. The monitoring period would generally relate to a time period within which a specific activity should be performed as per instruction to the learners by the educator.

It should be appreciated that each of the monitoring options presented to, and selected by, the educator through the console will define additional operational limitation which will then be set up (31 1 ) within the analytics component and against which all recorded usage event data will be measured. Once within the monitoring period, identifiers of the learners being monitored may be displayed to the educator on the educator interface (313). Recorded usage event data recorded by the device applications of the various individual learners being monitored will then continuously be analysed (315) by the analytics component on the server and results of such analysis conveyed (317) to and displayed to the educator on the educator interface. Based on a comparison by the analytics component of the server of the received usage event data of the various learners against the set of operational limitations, a status indicator of each learner being monitored may be updated and displayed to the educator (319) in near real-time. Through this mechanism the educator may then verify if any students or learners deviate from the expected instructions. For example, the status indicators of each learner may simply be defined by highlighting each user in one of three colours, green indicating that the learner's interaction within the device application conforms to all set operational limitations, in other words no potential violations have been detected, yellow indicating that some usage events do not fall within set operational limitations but that such deviations are considered to be minor violations and that the educator should inspect their cause, and red indicating that a serious violations has been detected and that the educator should follow up immediately. It should be appreciated from the description of the above status indicators that potentially innocent user interactions by a learner with a device application may be analysed as falling outside set operational limitations and accordingly potentially indicate malicious activity on the part of the learner. These "false-positives" should not precipitate educator intervention and nothing should be done by the educator to try to adjust or correct the user behaviour. Instead, the educator may be provided with the possibility to "drill-down" into the recorded usage event data of the applicable learner that has been flagged with a potential violation. As shown in more detail in the flow diagram of Figure (4), upon selecting a specific learner in the user interface of the CAM (401 ), the educator will be taken to a different screen where the detailed view (403) of specific learner usage events is shown to the educator. Each recorded usage event may be time-stamped by the time stamping component so that the educator knows exactly when the recorded event occurred. Based on the activity time line, the educator may then identify the specific event that registered the violation and decide on the appropriate action (405), which could include degrading a status indicator from yellow to green or red to yellow (407), or escalating a status indicator from yellow to red.

It is foreseen that an application such as the CAM may provide educators with a number of additional uses in a digital learning environment that were previously hard to achieve. Examples include:

Invigilation of learners performing a formal or informative assessment (ranging from a quick quiz to full exam);

Determining if an individual learner is in fact currently using the device application and is not in fact in another application on the mobile device which could indicate accessing of non- permitted learning material or other resources;

Automatically determining absenteeism - absent learners may have a "red" status as a lack of any usage event data from a particular learner may fall outside set operational limitations; or

Highlighting learner activity during class time so that it may be brought to the attention of a learner's parents or guardians. The CAM described above does not remove the educational responsibility from the educator but provides it with tools to make information available to the educator in a single location, as well as provides a valuable audit trail, so that if questions regarding a particular learner or a group of learners were to be raised, the needed information may be recalled.

By providing device applications with the usage event monitoring capabilities described above, each learner device application becomes capable of capturing usage information of the learner using the device. These events are numerous and range from starting the device application to specifics about which piece of learning material or even what page or portion of the learning material has been opened, additional content has been viewed, to unexpected application states and errors. This activity data is transferred to the PEF server for use by numerous systems. Using such usage event data, a unique usage pattern or profile can be assembled for a learner, and this usage pattern may be used to observe specific behaviours of interest to an educator.

The system described makes it possible for invigilation tasks to be performed from a central console, allowing the educator to more clearly see the specific activity that each learner performed. If a user's activity on the device, in particular within the device application, does not conform to desired behaviour, the educator may then follow the normal disciplinary, or corrective measures, isolating the precise invalid behaviour within a detail view which lists all the events generated by the applicable learner. It is then possible to identify a specific action as disallowed or to find a false-positive result, whereby the learner is not at fault, but rather the infrastructure of the network, or similar third party system, resulted in an error that was translated to a warning event for the educator.

The learner communications device may include a processor for executing the functions of components described below, which may be provided by hardware or by software units executing on the communications device. The software units may be stored in a memory component and instructions may be provided to the processor to carry out the functionality of the described components. In some cases, for example in a cloud computing implementation, software units arranged to manage and/or process data on behalf of the communication device may be provided remotely. Some or all of the components may be provided by a software application downloadable onto and executable on the communications device.

Figure 5 illustrates an example of a computing device (500) in which various aspects of the disclosure may be implemented. The computing device (500) may be suitable for storing and executing computer program code. The various participants and elements in the previously described system diagrams may use any suitable number of subsystems or components of the computing device (500) to facilitate the functions described herein. The computing device (500) may include subsystems or components interconnected via a communication infrastructure (505) (for example, a communications bus, a cross-over bar device, or a network). The computing device (500) may include one or more central processors (510) and at least one memory component in the form of computer-readable media. In some configurations, a number of processors may be provided and may be arranged to carry out calculations simultaneously. In some implementations, a number of computing devices (500) may be provided in a distributed, cluster or cloud-based computing configuration and may provide software units arranged to manage and/or process data on behalf of remote devices.

The memory components may include system memory (515), which may include read only memory (ROM) and random access memory (RAM). A basic input/output system (BIOS) may be stored in ROM. System software may be stored in the system memory (515) including operating system software. The memory components may also include secondary memory (520). The secondary memory (520) may include a fixed disk (521 ), such as a hard disk drive, and, optionally, one or more removable-storage interfaces (522) for removable-storage components (523). The removable-storage interfaces (522) may be in the form of removable- storage drives (for example, magnetic tape drives, optical disk drives, etc.) for corresponding removable storage-components (for example, a magnetic tape, an optical disk, etc.), which may be written to and read by the removable-storage drive. The removable-storage interfaces (522) may also be in the form of ports or sockets for interfacing with other forms of removable-storage components (523) such as a flash memory drive, external hard drive, or removable memory chip, etc.

The computing device (500) may include an external communications interface (530) for operation of the computing device (500) in a networked environment enabling transfer of data between multiple computing devices (500). Data transferred via the external communications interface (530) may be in the form of signals, which may be electronic, electromagnetic, optical, radio, or other types of signal. The external communications interface (530) may enable communication of data between the computing device (500) and other computing devices including servers and external storage facilities. Web services may be accessible by the computing device (500) via the communications interface (530). The external communications interface (530) may also enable other forms of communication to and from the computing device (500) including, voice communication, near field communication, radio frequency communications, such as Bluetooth™, etc. The computer-readable media in the form of the various memory components may provide storage of computer-executable instructions, data structures, program modules, software units and other data. A computer program product may be provided by a computer-readable medium having stored computer-readable program code executable by the central processor (510). A computer program product may be provided by a non-transient computer-readable medium, or may be provided via a signal or other transient means via the communications interface (530).

Interconnection via the communication infrastructure (505) allows the central processor (510) to communicate with each subsystem or component and to control the execution of instructions from the memory components, as well as the exchange of information between subsystems or components. Peripherals (such as printers, scanners, cameras, or the like) and input/output (I/O) devices (such as a mouse, touchpad, keyboard, microphone, and the like) may couple to the computing device (500) either directly or via an I/O controller (535). These components may be connected to the computing device (500) by any number of means known in the art, such as a serial port. One or more monitors (545) may be coupled via a display or display adapter (540) to the computing device (500).

Figure 6 shows a block diagram of a communication device (600). The various participants and elements in the previously described system diagrams, for example may use any suitable number of subsystems or components of the communication device (600). The communication device (600) may be a cell phone, a feature phone, a smart phone, a satellite phone, or a computing device having a phone capability.

The communication device (600) may include a processor (605) (e.g., a microprocessor) for processing the functions of the communication device (600) and a display (620) to allow a user to see the phone numbers and other information and messages. The communication device (600) may further include an input element (625) to allow a user to input information into the device (e.g., input buttons, touch screen, etc.), a speaker (630) to allow the user to hear voice communication, music, etc., and a microphone (635) to allow the user to transmit his or her voice through the communication device (600). The processor (610) of the communication device (600) may connect to a memory (615). The memory (615) may be in the form of a computer-readable medium that stores data and, optionally, computer-executable instructions.

The communication device (600) may also include a communication element (640) for connection to communication channels (e.g., a cellular telephone network, data transmission network, Wi-Fi™ network, satellite-phone network, Internet network, Satellite Internet Network, etc.). The communication element (640) may include an associated wireless transfer element, such as an antenna. The communication element (640) may include a subscriber identity module (SIM) in the form of an integrated circuit that stores an international mobile subscriber identity and the related key used to identify and authenticate a subscriber using the communication device (600). One or more subscriber identity modules may be removable from the communication device (600) or embedded in the communication device (600).

The communication device (600) may further include a contactless element (650), which is typically implemented in the form of a semiconductor chip (or other data storage element) with an associated wireless transfer element, such as an antenna. The contactless element (650) may be associated with (e.g., embedded within) the communication device (600) and data or control instructions transmitted via a cellular network may be applied to the contactless element (650) by means of a contactless element interface (not shown). The contactless element interface may function to permit the exchange of data and/or control instructions between mobile device circuitry (and hence the cellular network) and the contactless element (650). The contactless element (650) may be capable of transferring and receiving data using a near field communications (NFC) capability (or near field communications medium) typically in accordance with a standardised protocol or data transfer mechanism (e.g., ISO 14443/NFC). Near field communications capability is a short-range communications capability, such as radio- frequency identification (RFID), Bluetooth™, infra-red, or other data transfer capability that can be used to exchange data between the communication device (600) and an interrogation device. Thus, the communication device (600) may be capable of communicating and transferring data and/or control instructions via both a cellular network and near field communications capability.

The foregoing description has been presented for the purpose of illustration; it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Persons skilled in the relevant art can appreciate that many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above disclosure. For example, it is foreseen that the identification and recording of usage event data may be useful in anomaly detection with regard to learner device and software application usage. This could entail that in the context of the learner, not opening a book or other piece of learning material for longer than a specified period of time could result in a notification to an educator or other responsible person to react.

Another possible use may be in further analytics where the device events may inform the teaching body (teachers / headmaster / head of departments) that the effort of some resources or content is not well received as no learners have viewed the content.

Any of the steps, operations, components or processes described herein may be performed or implemented with one or more hardware or software units, alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, a software unit is implemented with a computer program product comprising a non-transient computer-readable medium containing computer program code, which can be executed by a processor for performing any or all of the steps, operations, or processes described. Software units or functions described in this application may be implemented as computer program code using any suitable computer language such as, for example, Java™, C++, or Perl™ using, for example, conventional or object-oriented techniques. The computer program code may be stored as a series of instructions, or commands on a non- transitory computer-readable medium, such as a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a magnetic medium such as a hard-drive, or an optical medium such as a CD- ROM. Any such computer-readable medium may also reside on or within a single computational apparatus, and may be present on or within different computational apparatuses within a system or network.

Flowchart illustrations and block diagrams of methods, systems, and computer program products according to embodiments are used herein. Each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, may provide functions which may be implemented by computer readable program instructions. In some alternative implementations, the functions identified by the blocks may take place in a different order to that shown in the flowchart illustrations.

The language used in the specification has been principally selected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not have been selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter. It is therefore intended that the scope of the invention be limited not by this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue on an application based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of the embodiments of the invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.

Finally, throughout the specification and claims unless the contents requires otherwise the word 'comprise' or variations such as 'comprises' or 'comprising' will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated integer or group of integers but not the exclusion of any other integer or group of integers.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1 . A system for monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the system including a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the learner device including:

an event monitoring component for identifying usage events that occur while the learner interacts with and/or within the software application;

a time stamping component for time stamping identified usage events;

a communications component for transmitting recorded event usage data to the computerised server when a communication link to the computerised server is available.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the usage events include one or more of an initial initialisation of the software application, closing or otherwise temporary inactiveness of the software application, subsequent initialisation of the software application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of such learning material accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring component is operating.

3. A system as claimed in claim 1 or claims 2, further including a computerised server capable of communicating with the learner device, the computerised server including: an operational analytics component including a set of operational limitations against which usage event data may be measured;

an educator component for receiving operational limitations from an educator device; and a reporting component for reporting time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to the educator device.

A system for monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the system including a computerised server capable of communicating with a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the computerised server including:

a reporting component for reporting time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to the educator device.

A method of monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the method being conducted at a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the method including the steps of:

identifying, with an events monitoring component of the software application, usage events that occur while the learner interacts with and/or within the software application;

locally storing time-stamped usage events; and

A method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the step of identifying the usage events includes identifying one or more of an initial initialisation of the software application, closing or otherwise temporary inactiveness of the software application, subsequent initialisation of the software application, identification and marking of alternative learning material, individual pages or sections of such learning material accessed by a learner from within the device application, general device application error events, accessing by the learner of additionally pushed content from an educator or instructor, and actions that may be deemed irregular within a given set of limitations within which the monitoring component is operating as usage events.

A method of monitoring learner activity in an educational infrastructure, the method being conducted at a computerised server capable of communicating with a learner device associated with a learner and having a software application resident therein, the method including the steps of:

analysing, with an operational analytics component of the software application, the time-stamped usage event data taking into consideration a set of operational limitations;

assigning statuses to each learner for which event usage data was received and analysed based on a set of operational limitations against which the received usage event data was compared; and

transmitting, with a reporting component, time-stamped learner event usage data, together with a status indicator associated with the assigned status of each learner, to one or more educator devices.