Student-centered, cross-institutional curriculum management system apparatus and method
OwnerPhillip M. Adamsinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Apparatus and methods are provided for managing a student's educational curriculum. A degree dependency graph is created for a student corresponding to a degree sought after at a selected educational institution. The degree dependency graph may be created in accordance with degree requirements, graduation requirements, prerequisite requirements, and the like, provided by the catalog of a selected institution. In addition, a standardized nomenclature may be created using XML tags or other terminology, to identify like information from different educational institutions. The XML tags may be used by a curriculum management system to identify courses from multiple institutions to satisfy requirements of a selected degree program at a selected institution.
Claims19
A method for automatically creating and optimizing a curriculum of study across a plurality of educational offerings, the method comprising:
- preparing comprising
- identifying a first educational institution, offering a first plurality of courses and a plurality of degrees available over a series of terms constituting time periods, each degree thereof having corresponding requirements established by the first educational institution as conditions precedent for awarding the degree,
- identifying a second educational institution offering a second plurality of courses,
- identifying, by the computer system, equivalencies between courses of the first and second plurality of courses, and
- storing in the computer system the equivalencies;
- presenting, by the computer system over a computer network after the preparing, the plurality of degrees to a student;
- selecting, by the student over the computer network after the preparing, a first degree from among the plurality of degrees;
- selecting, by the student, criteria reflecting student preferences for at least one of time to graduate, course credit load, travel distance for attendance, and days of the week for attendance to be imposed by the computer system as constraints on completing the first degree,
- optimizing, by the computer system, a class schedule comprising selected courses and terms corresponding respectively thereto, selected from the first plurality of courses and the second plurality of courses and completing the requirements corresponding to the first degree within the constraints;
- presenting to the student, by the computer system over the computer network the class schedule as an individualized, dependency graph to the student.
A method for optimizing a curriculum completing requirements for a degree, based on criteria specified by a student, the method comprising:
- identifying a first educational institution, offering a first plurality of courses and a plurality of degrees available for completion during a series of terms constituting time periods during which courses from the plurality of courses may be attended, each degree thereof having corresponding requirements established by the first educational institution as conditions precedent for awarding the degree;
- identifying a second educational institution offering a second plurality of courses;
- presenting, by the computer system over a computer network after the preparing, the plurality of degrees to a student;
- selecting, by the student over the computer network after the preparing, a first degree from among the plurality of degrees;
- selecting, by the student, criteria reflecting student preferences for at least one of time to graduate, course credit load, travel distance for attendance, and days of the week for attendance to be imposed by the computer system as constraints on completing the first degree;
- optimizing, by the computer system, a class schedule comprising establishing a correspondence between selected courses and selected terms;
- the optimizing, wherein the selected courses constitute a subset selected from the first plurality of courses and the second plurality of courses;
- the optimizing, wherein the selected terms constitute times for attendance in the selected courses resulting in completion of the first degree by the student, within the constraints.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.