FreeDegree.com is the idea that you can gamify free education using advanced technology. By gamifying education this site can encourage people to learn. The site will be a proffessional- community run site designed towards the social networking of educators and students. There are no requirments in the physical world for someone to have the right to post their own information. This means the the site will have amatures and proffessionals competing side by side for users to acknowledge their work.
This will be done using videos on the site captured through a program called Omni-Capture and Rosetta'e (described on the applications page). Once the video is captured it is processed through another program called Other Deity (described on the applications page). Once the videos have gone through Other Deity they are ready for upload. Once uploaded they are catergorized by the creator. This is checked by a OP and then the video gets linked into the system as a Video Tutorial.
Video tutorials are posted by users in their appropriate subject and watched by other users. A class is an educational/instructional video with a quiz at the end of it. A group of these videos put together are called a Course. At the end of a Course there are Tests. Test are summaries of the knowledge that should have been maintained from the course. Similarly Quizes do the same for classes. The points gained from taking Quizes and Tests will go towards their Degree Points.
Degree Points are a gamified phantom-structure that is used to compete with friends, colleges, and family. They are comprized of three other structures of points: Educator Points (Points for Classes/Cources that are ranked high by other players.), Student Points (Points gained from scoring high on tests and quizes), and Award Points (points gained by getting acheivements.) The formulas for determining all the points are given on the Point System Page.
When Courses are shown on the screen their order is determined by the Academia Score. After a course has been taken and before any points are known or recieved the course is rated by the user between 1 and 5.
1) Absoltuly terrible
2) Bad
3) Average
4) Good
5) Excellent
Everyone whom took the vote has their score averaged into the Rating Score. Its the Academia Score of a Course that determines the Courses order shown on the display. So the better a Course is, the more people will see it, while if the Course is bad then it will not be seen as frequently. After a determined amount of time and a determined amount of votes are recieved if a Course has a rating of less than 2 then it is removed from the site. This ensures quality control without strain on OPs.
For additonal feed back for the video creators there will be a forum for each Class and Course. This lets the teacher interact directly with the student and their questions. This will enhance the user experiance for not only the students but the teachers.
What makes FreeDegree.come so radically different from other online education site and forums is its technology and features. The uses of the three softwares mentioned above enhance usability of the site far better than any education site out there. It lets anyone from any nationality, age group, race, and gender communicate effectively their ideas regardless of location or background. This lets down the barriers between created by nationality, age group, race, and gender. No application in the world has done this as effectively as the technology being implimented in FreeDegree.com can.
The gamified structure of the site creates competition between friends, colleeges, and everyone who admits themselves to the magic circle of the site. The use of the profile lets competitiors look at their competions work and try to better it by gettign better scores and ratings. The profile system lets anyone compare themselves to anyone else on a nummarical scale. In this way not only is competion created but a desire for quality as well as quantity.
The rating system used to rate individual Classes and Courses overall lets the creators get a general level of feedback on their knowledge and work. In addition the forum aspect of the quizes and courses let the instructor get more dicert feed back and enourages sustainablity of users for short and long term use. These two structures combined give the users enough information to go back and edit their work where needed. This reduced the amount of work put on to OPs and disperes it amoung the sites users.
**** Conclusion ****
Point System Page
The way to determine the number of points received from each Quiz is as such:
(100 / # of Quiz in Course) = Max Student Points Acheivable by User
The way to determine the number of points received from each Test is as such:
100 = Max Student Points Acheivable by User
The way to determine the number of Educator Points a User can Acheive from a Class is as such:
(100 / # of Classes in Course) – ( [20 / # of Classes in Course] * [ Rating Score - 5] ) = Educator Points for Creator of Class
The way to determine the number of Educator Points a User can Acheive from a Course is as such:
100 – (20 * [ Rating Score - 5 ]) = Educator Points For Creator of Course
The way to determine the number of Degree Points is as such:
Educator Points/2 + Student Points/3 + Award Points = Degree Points
This point-rating system is called the Rating Score. When you multiply the Rating Score by the creator's Degree Points you get the Academia Score.
Degree Points * Rating Score = Academia Score
In the case of colaborating users towards a single Course the way to determine the Academia Score of that Course would be this equation instead.
[Degree Points of 'User A' * (# of Classes by 'User A' / Total # of Classes in Course)] +
[Degree Points of 'User B' * (# of Classes by 'User B' / Total # of Classes in Course)]
= Academia Score of Course
Applications page
**** Communicate Ideas more clearly ****
Omni-Capture is a program under deveopment of Pretty Weird inc. (A company I currently own.) Omni-Capture uses an HD webcam or a Connect to capture the facial movements and skeletal movements of the users into a video format without creating large files. Files are editable in most 3D- modeling programs because it can export to almost any file type. The programs core file storage extention is planned to be .sfiv.
Rosetta'e is a program under deveopment of Pretty Weird inc. (A company I currently own.) Rosetta'e is an audio recording program that records any language and breaks it down into a base code. This base code can be translated back into almost any language using Rosetta'e. In conjunction with .sfiv files it can also pic up sign language and turn it into audio format or vice versa.
Other Deity is a program under deveopment of Pretty Weird inc. (A company I currently own.) This program takes in .sfiv files and uploads them for the purpose of putting a skin over the skeletal models created in Omni-Capture. The base skin is composed of an 'average' of all the facial structures of all the user photos. This comes from the idea that beauty comes from having common traits. This ensures that all users will find teachers in the videos to be appealing to everyone on the site. The base skin is comprised of all races, genders, and ages.
