Slides prepared by Ananda Gunawardena (“guna”), Computer Science, and David Kaufer, English, at Carnegie Mellon University Classroom Salon is an online social learning platform that creates a community of learners engaged in deep discussion of course content.

1. Ananda Gunawardena (“guna”)
Computer Science
&
David Kaufer
English
Carnegie Mellon University

2. What we bring to the project
A human-centric view
A machine-centric
view

3. Salon vision

4. To extract and organize knowledge
around small groups

5. What Salon is
 A platform that supports social learning
 A content-centric platform that allows deep discussion
of all content related to the course
 A discovery platform that allows users to find other
“interesting” users
 A platform that allows teachers to get to know their
students better
 A platform that allows students to get to know each
other
 A platform that protects privacy of students

6. What Salon is not
 It is not a course management system
 It is not an ebook platform
 It is not just another highlighting tool
 It is not a document management system

7. We think most educational
technology systems are designed
from a system centric view
Do not support teacher thinking or
workflow

8. Salon is designed with a user-centric
view

9. Salon handles most course related
tasks better

10. Teacher ask students to read and
prepare for class
 No other platform supports reading like Salon does
 Salon tracks and records student activities
 Social nature of the platform encourages active
participation
 How do you track reading with other
platforms/processes?
 Course management systems?
 Learning management systems?
 Reading groups?
 Polling/surveys?

11. Track Reading

12. Teacher ask students to complete
homework
 Salon enables small group homework completion
 Individually
 As a group
 How do other systems manage this process?
 Submitting completed homework online or on paper

13. Complete homework

14. Students have a lot of questions
about the assignment
 Salon enables immediate clarification on the context
 How do other systems handle this?
 Discussion boards
 attachments
 Help sessions

15. Clarify Assignments

16. There are no good ways to
measure student’s prior knowledge
 Salon enables prior knowledge detection activities
 How do other systems handle this?
 Pre course surveys
 Polling
 1-1 meetings

17. Measure Prior Knowledge

18. Tracking the activities of students
 Dash board is a way to track activities of each/all student(s)

19. Salon is Social

20. People I am interested in

21. Current activities of those I am interested in

22. These people are interested in me

23. I manage my Salons

24. How to create this social connection?
Click on anyone’s picture and find their interests

25. Salon Teacher Tools

26. Monitoring Class Activities

27. Monitoring Individual Students
Thomas Manzini
Performance in each unit
annotations
Commenting
on others
responses
discussions
How time spent
Salons Created: 2
Documents uploaded: 6
Annotations Made: 56
Responses Provided: 40
Commenting on others: 42
Open Discussions: 38
Filter

28. Salon is research based

29. Tone matching dictionaries
Expert humanist
Usability
Semantic similarity algorithms
Adaptive Book technologies
Scalability and performance
Alex Cheek
Interaction design
Information design
Joanna Wolfe
Reading and Annotations

31. How learning works
Eberly Center for Learning
Carnegie Mellon University

32. Salon Technology

33. Salon Technology and Statistics
 Flexible and Scalable platform
 asp.net, C#, Flex
 Transition into Cloud
 Virtual Salon server
 php, html5, js
 Mobile Salon
 Android Tablet/phone Support
 ipad/iphone in the works (target date: January 2012)
 Statistics
 Current users: 8000+
 Documents uploaded : ~ 5637
 Salons created: ~ 670
 Separate Salon server Deployments: Grover City College
 http://classroomsalon.gcc.edu

34. Funding and company Status
 Funded by
 National Science Foundation
 Gates Foundation
 CMU
 Spin-off Status
 Seed Funding by
 innovation works
 Heinz Endowment
 Business Relation Discussions
 Mc-Graw Hill
 HP
 Intel Capital
 Yahoo!

35. Thank you