SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ON-LINE ACADEMIC COMPETITION

• US 20130267285A1
• Filed: 04/04/2012
• Published: 10/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Interstellar, Inc. (Velo Labs Technology Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Interstellar, Inc. (Velo Labs Technology Ltd.)
• Inventors: Kelley, Timothy J., Perrone, Michael J., Napoli, Joseph T., Mihailov, Innokenty Y.
• Granted Patent: US 10,339,825 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 463/9
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/46 Computing the game score
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/795 for finding other players; for building a team; for providing a buddy list
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/798 for assessing skills or for ranking players, e.g. for generating a hall of fame computing the game score A63F13/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 17/3276 wherein the players compete, e.g. tournament
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/00 Electrically-operated educational appliances working with questions and answers G09B7/00; simulators G09B9/00; advertising or displaying in general G09F
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/125 the stations being mobile
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/02 of the type wherein the student is expected to construct an answer to the question which is presented or wherein the machine gives an answer to the question presented by a student
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/06 of the multiple-choice answer-type, i.e. where a given question is provided with a series of answers and a choice has to be made from the answers

Abstract

A web application facilitates live on-line academic competition between teams and individuals based on multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank questions and fosters academic competition between students and schools. Using the software application, a team'"'"'s Coach may enter his/her team in a league of regular competition, schedule a single competition with another team, or organize a competition between the team'"'"'s members by dividing the team into multiple teams. The test environment provides the experience of competing over test questions, including a scoreboard that keeps track of progress with respect to the test time and the opponent. Students of comparable abilities on competing teams are matched using a matching algorithm that matches the students based on past test performance and the like.

Claims

1. A system for on-line academic competition, comprising:

a database that stores test questions;

team, coach, and individual contestant profiles; and

test response statistics for the teams and individual contestants; and

a processor programmed to interact with the database and with coach and individual contestant processing devices to perform the steps of;

enabling the creation of teams of individual contestants by the coach for participation in academic competition;

presenting predetermined test questions to the processing devices of the individual contestants of competing teams for response in a time frame allocated for the academic competition; and

providing a real time scoreboard that permits each individual contestant to track his/her and his/her opponent'"'"'s progress with respect to both the time frame for answering questions and questions answered correctly.

2. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor calculates a winner of an academic competition between teams and/or between respective individual contestants.

3. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor enables a contestant to conceal his/her identity from a competing contestant or to permit the display of his/her name and photo on the scoreboard of the competing contestant.

4. A system as in claim 1, wherein the scoreboard is presented with a clock face component that alerts the contestant as to whether he/she is on pace to finish the test questions in the allocated time frame.

5. A system as in claim 1, wherein the scoreboard displays an individual score, as determined by a number of questions answered correctly by each of matched individual contestants, or a team score, as determined by taking a running average of all individual contestant scores from the respective teams and rounding to the nearest whole number.

6. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor evenly matches individual contestants from opposing teams 1:

1, 2;

1, 3;

1, . . . N;

1, where N is an integer, until all contestants have been matched, in accordance with at least one of the following rules;

limiting a maximum number of consecutive visits (MNCV) to the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m, where n is the number of contestants from a larger group and m is the number of contestants from a smaller group;

or

leaving the MNCV unconstrained in which case the MNCV is n−

m+1;

or

setting the MNCV to an integer smaller than n−

m+1 and larger than the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m;

or

allowing stages to be represented by not only a stage number, but by a number of consecutive visits as well in which case individual contestants in the larger group are paired multiple times.

7. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor enables the creation of leagues of teams, in which separate teams can be merged to form one team, and the creation of a cycle of academic competitions amongst a league of teams.

8. A system as in claim 7, wherein the processor enables one team to search for and then challenge another team of common time availability to an academic competition and enables a team to be divided into multiple teams for an intra-team academic competition.

9. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor enables the creation of a live competition event between two teams by enabling the coach to:

select a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

select a question set for the academic competition; and

select a team from a list of teams having a common time availability.

10. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor enables the creation of a live competition event within one team by enabling the coach to:

select a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

select a question set for the academic competition; and

divide the team into two or more opposing teams by first deciding the desirable amount of opposing teams and then filling each opposing team with members from the original team.

11. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor further enables the coach to create and save questions including the assignment of images to them, or to choose questions from a database of questions submitted by other coaches for utilization in an academic competition.

12. A system as in claim 11, wherein the processor enables the coach to create a question set by naming the question set in accordance with a predetermined list of categories, populating the question set with questions, and storing any created questions in said database in said predetermined list of categories.

13. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor enables an individual contestant to upload a photo, or select from collection of photos, to be used as a background on a display to the questions presented in an academic competition.

14. A system as in claim 1, wherein the processor facilitates the introduction of contestants to contestants and coaches to coaches from opposing teams.

15. A method for on-line academic competition, comprising:

enabling the creation of teams of individual contestants by a coach for participation in academic competition;

presenting predetermined test questions to the processing devices of the individual contestants of competing teams for response in a time frame allocated for the academic competition; and

providing a real time scoreboard that permits each individual contestant to track his/her and his/her opponent'"'"'s progress with respect to both the time frame for answering questions and questions answered correctly.

16. A method as in claim 15, further comprising calculating a winner of an academic competition between teams and/or between respective individual contestants.

17. A method as in claim 15, further comprising enabling a contestant to conceal his/her identity from a competing contestant or to permit the display of his/her name and photo on the scoreboard of the competing contestant.

18. A method as in claim 15, wherein the scoreboard is presented with a clock face component that alerts the contestant as to whether he/she is on pace to finish the test questions in the allocated time frame.

19. A method as in claim 15, wherein the scoreboard displays an individual score, as determined by a number of questions answered correctly by each of matched individual contestants, or a team score as determined by taking a running average of all individual contestant scores from the respective teams and rounding to the nearest whole number.

20. A method as in claim 15, further comprising matching individual contestants from opposing teams 1:

1, 2;

1, 3;

1, . . . N;

1, where N is an integer, until all contestants have been matched, in accordance with at least one of the following rules;

limiting a maximum number of consecutive visits (MNCV) to the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m, where n is the number of contestants from a larger group and m is the number of contestants from a smaller group;

or

leaving the MNCV unconstrained in which case the MNCV is n−

m+1;

or

setting the MNCV to an integer smaller than n−

m+1 and larger than the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m;

or

allowing stages to be represented by not only a stage number, but by a number of consecutive visits as well in which case individual contestants in the larger group are paired multiple times.

21. A method as in claim 15, further comprising enabling the creation of leagues of teams, in which separate teams can be merged to form one team, and the creation of a cycle of academic competitions amongst a league of teams.

22. A method as in claim 21, further comprising enabling one team to search for and then challenge another team of common time availability to an academic competition and enabling a team to be divided into multiple teams for an intra-team academic competition.

23. A method as in claim 15, further comprising creating a live competition event between two teams by:

selecting a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

selecting a question set for the academic competition; and

selecting a team from a list of teams having a common time availability.

24. A method as in claim 15, further comprising creating a live competition event within one team by:

selecting a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

selecting a question set for the academic competition; and

dividing the team into two or more opposing teams by first deciding the desirable amount of opposing teams and then filling each opposing team with members from the original team.

25. A method as in claim 15, further comprising enabling the coach to create and save questions, including the assignment of images to them, or to choose questions from a database of questions submitted by other coaches for utilization in an academic competition.

26. A method as in claim 25, wherein the coach creates a question set by naming the question set in accordance with a predetermined list of categories, populating the question set with questions, and storing any created questions in said database in said predetermined list of categories.

27. A method as in claim 15, further comprising enabling an individual contestant to upload a photo, or select from collection of photos, to be used as a background on a display to the questions presented in an academic competition.

28. A method as in claim 15, further comprising facilitating the introduction of contestants to contestants and coaches to coaches from opposing teams.

29. A computer readable storage device having instructions stored thereon that when executed by a processor cause the processor to provide an on-line academic competition including the steps of:

enabling the creation of teams of individual contestants by a coach for participation in academic competition;

presenting predetermined test questions to processing devices of the individual contestants of competing teams for response in a time frame allocated for the academic competition; and

providing a real time scoreboard that permits each individual contestant to track his/her and his/her opponent'"'"'s progress with respect to both the time frame for answering questions and questions answered correctly.

30. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for calculating a winner of an academic competition between teams and/or between respective individual contestants.

31. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for enabling a contestant to conceal his/her identity from a competing contestant or to permit the display of his/her name and photo on the scoreboard of the competing contestant.

32. A storage device as in claim 29, wherein the scoreboard is presented with a clock face component that alerts the contestant as to whether he/she is on pace to finish the test questions in the allocated time frame.

33. A storage device as in claim 32, wherein the scoreboard displays an individual score, as determined by a number of questions answered correctly by each of matched individual contestants, or a team score as determined by taking a running average of all individual contestant scores from the respective teams and rounding to the nearest whole number.

34. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for matching individual contestants from opposing teams 1:

1, 2;

1, 3;

1, . . . N;

1, where N is an integer, until all contestants have been matched, in accordance with at least one of the following rules;

limiting a maximum number of consecutive visits (MNCV) to the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m, where n is the number of contestants from a larger group and m is the number of contestants from a smaller group;

or

leaving the MNCV unconstrained in which case the MNCV is n−

m+1;

or

setting the MNCV to an integer smaller than n−

m+1 and larger than the smallest integer greater than or equal to n/m;

or

allowing stages to be represented by not only a stage number, but by a number of consecutive visits as well in which case individual contestants in the larger group are paired multiple times.

35. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for enabling the creation of leagues of teams, in which separate teams can be merged to form one team, and the creation of a cycle of academic competitions amongst a league of teams.

36. A storage device as in claim 35, further comprising instructions for enabling one team to search for and then challenge another team of common time availability to an academic competition and for enabling a team to be divided into multiple teams for an intra-team academic competition.

37. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for creating a live competition event between two teams by:

selecting a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

selecting a question set for the academic competition; and

selecting a team from a list of teams having a common time availability.

38. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for creating a live competition event within one team by:

selecting a date, time, and length for an academic competition;

selecting a question set for the academic competition; and

dividing the team into two or more opposing teams by first deciding the desirable amount of opposing teams and then filling each opposing team with members from the original team.

39. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for enabling the coach to create and save questions, including the assignment of images to them, or to choose questions from a database of questions submitted by other coaches for utilization in an academic competition.

40. A storage device as in claim 39, wherein the coach creates a question set by naming the question set in accordance with a predetermined list of categories, populating the question set with questions, and storing any created questions in said database in said predetermined list of categories.

41. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for enabling an individual contestant to upload a photo, or select from collection of photos, to be used as a background on a display to the questions presented in an academic competition.

42. A storage device as in claim 29, further comprising instructions for facilitating the introduction of contestants to contestants and coaches to coaches from opposing teams.