Signals - Stoplights for student success
At the STS meeting in Kyoto, I had the pleasure of meeting France Córdova, the president of Purdue University. I took my first full pattern recognition course at Purdue long ago and far away (my brother Bill is a Boilermaker/Purdue alum, too). France mentioned some cool education technology that had been developed at Purdue, called Signals - Stoplights for student success . Signals blends two key ideas: The patterns of student failure can be spotted early: much earlier than existing systems relying on failing midterms! Purdue can spot patterns that indicate a much higher chance of failure, and intervene early. Simple communications design that everybody gets: green light, yellow light, red light. And, get these signals to both students and faculty. I was able to talk to one of the senior team at Purdue about this at the recent launch of Purdue's Silicon Valley presence. He was quite realistic about the limitations of the system. For example, a really bright student who can pu...