UCL DECProject Proposal

By Alex Forsyth, Louis Heery, Jade Li, Tsvetina Koleva and Oluwadara Odeyepo

OverviewA study by the Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission has shown that a child from a disadvantaged background will on average be 50% less likely to achieve 5 or more GCSEs at grades A*-C.

● Simple registration

● Target underperforming children from schools

Two-player games

Stimulating questions ranked by difficulty

Promotes active learning

Goals

Create a fun, easy to use and enjoyable website

Professional website designers

Spreading the idea that science can be enjoyable

Inspiring and well researched questions

Effective advertising

Targeting underperforming

schools in deprived area

Getting more girls interested in science

Engaging underperforming children

The competition platform and well pitched questions

Targeting comprehensive girl’s schools

Prize & Choosing WinnersPrizes given out every 4 Months and

leaderboard reset

Points allocated for answering questions correctly, winningand completing a round.

Initial prize: 3 Children from KeyStage 3 and KeyStage 4 visit a local science company.

Project grows Bigger prizes given out.➜

2 Leaderboards: School and Overall.

Question DifficultyStudents get paired up based on

their Ranking.

Students answer questions that get progressively harder.

Answer = RIGHT+1 to y (Total Answers).

Answer = WRONG+1 to x (Wrong Answers)+1 to y (Total Answers).

Difficulty Level of Question

● EASY (difficulty = 0)● HARD (difficulty = 1)

Difficulty Level of Question=

Wrong AnswersTotal Answers

Tracking Progress

Personal progress

How many points?

How long on the

platform?

Rate of progress?

Engaged with the platform?

Tracking Progress

Difficulty Level

● Assigned to every question; Flexible difficulty changing in accordance to answers

● Pitch appropriate questions for different student’s ranking score.

● Different pace of development => Different learning experience in the platform

Tracking Progress

IDEAS

RecommendationsComplains

Feedback

Progress of the

PLATFORM

c

CommonExit points?

Number of users & visitors

Average time spent on the

website

Monthly data analysis

“Suggest an Improvement”Section

c

Tracking Progress

● Data Analysis Meeting (every month)

○ Improvements of the User Experience

○ Evaluating trends

○ Making adjustments to Explanations

○ Analyze schools’ performance

○ Seek for distractors in the website (exit points)

○ Answering feedback

○ New challenges and competitions

Tracking Progress

Impact on students academic achievement

Change of grades and attitude?

● Academic interest

● Track number of students choosing optional science subjects

● Compare with school’s history (+ national levels)

● Science clubs and initiatives

The IMPACT

Better Grades

Positive attitude towards STEM subjects :)

More

Science

initiatives

Tracking Progress

Related Activities How are we different?● No major funding bodies/donors are currently financing projects

with the same method and purpose as ours

● There are schemes and websites in place which use similar methods or have similar purposes

● These can be broken down into one of two groups:

● Online quizzes and quiz applications

● Written exams competitions

Online quizzes and quiz applications

● There are quite a few examples. some of which include:

Written exam competitions

● Most of these competitions are quite different, but the competition most closely related to ours is the British Physics Olympiad (BPhO))

● Some of the examples of national and international competitions include:

Similarities and aspects which we have incorporated:

How are we different?

Well thought out and interesting questions.

Like the British Physics Olympiad we will be using the lure of a prize to entice participants to join and stay in the competition

Easily accessible platform to answer questions using the internet

Similar to the physics quiz apps and websites we are trying to make our questions paced

We will be directly marketing to and targeting those from disadvantaged backgrounds and in schools in deprived areas. We will be particularly targeting girls schools

Unlike the written exam competitions we are using an online platform which makes it easily accessible and flexible so that it does not interfere with other commitments.

We target children who may not have been as inspired by the science education at their school as those from wealthy backgrounds and more affluent areas

We are using a unique approach to selecting winners

Marketing and Publicity

Registration and Login

Email notifications

Up-to-date pages in social medias

ChallengeME

onSOCIAL MEDIA

Marketing and Publicity

● Collaboration with education initiatives

○ Publicity in return

○ Taking part in educational and science conferences

Marketing and Publicity

● Finding underperforming schools

○ Communicate the idea to academics.

○ Demonstrations of how the platform works Advertising ➜campaigns.

Marketing and Publicity

ChallengeMe will make learning fun and

effective. It is easy to use and can even

get you an amazing prize - an insight into

the world of Science!

Monitoring and Publicity● What about the parents?

○ Make them aware that science degrees and internship opportunities are available

○ Encourage them to support children in their struggles with STEM subjects

Attend PTA meetings

Inform about new

opportunities

Show the significance of science

Extending the reach

to a different

generation

Financial BreakdownSummary of Income (From STFC Funding and AdSense) and Expenses (Website

creation, maintenance and marketing).

NET = Income - Expenses.

Financial Breakdown

Financial Breakdown- Traffic = Total pageviews per session.

- Revenue = [Traffic] x [Money payed per 1000 impressions]

- Income used to pay for website upkeep / maintenance.

Financial Breakdown

Graph of estimated traffic

Financial BreakdownExpenses of project = mainly website design (salaries of coders)

£35 / hr, for 3 weeks, for 2 people (one backend, one frontend).

Domain / hosting = relatively CHEAP (AWS).

Content / new questions = FREE

Every 4 months, we allocate £50 for the student(s) in travel expenditure.

Financial Breakdown

Example ChallengeME Questions

Example ChallengeME QuestionsQ1. Dora the explorer had a family emergency, so they send Ina, the Polar Bear, for an important space mission on the Moon. What Ina learned at school was that the orbit of the Moon around the Earth is circular and that the distance from the Earth to the Moon is 400 thousand km. Unfortunately, NASA only allowed Ina to stay on the Moon for no longer than one path of the Moon around the Earth. Help Ina, the Polar Bear, to calculate how long the path is.

The path is the circumference and the Moon-Earth distance is the radius.

a) 2.5 million kmb) 1.25 million kmc) 400,000 kmd) πr²

Explanation:We can find the answer by using the equation Circumference = 2π x radius where the radius is the lengthfrom the earth to the moon. The path the the moon describes is equal to the circumference of the circle.1.25 million km is a huge distance.To travel this distance you would need to drive around the earth 63 times!To gain a better sense of this distance see this site: http://htwins.net/scale2/ and scroll to 10^8.5

Use this figure to answer the question

Hint

Physics is coolQ2. Bob the builder has decided to build a space shuttle in his spare time, because he has

decided he has had enough with his recalcitrant wife and has decided to move to Mars. He knows that when space shuttles enter enters the atmosphere of the venus he will need special heat shields to protect him. Why?

Shooting stars are meteorites that burn up in the sky

a) Space is very cold and they are required to keep the astronauts warm.b) The speeds that they travel at cause the atmosphere to burn up around them.c) The astronauts hit the ground very hard and the heat shields help protect them.d) Reducing the heating effect on the space shuttle reduces the terminal velocity of the spacecraft,

slowing its descent.

Example ChallengeME Questions

Explanation:Spacecraft burn up as they hit the atmosphere at super high speeds during re-entry- they can reach up to 1650 degrees. You can watch a video here describing how spacecraft are built to withstand these tempratures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvpd8xmNJNk&feature=youtu.be

Hint

Help: Use this figure to answer the question

Q3. Telescopes work by magnifying images of objects in sky. The Hubble in particular has a magnification of 8000. If an object in the sky is about the size of a speck of sand 2mm across how big could the hubble make it appear.

Magnification is how many times an image is bigger than the original. So a magnification of 2 means the image is twice

that of original objects.

a) 8002mb) 16mc) 8000mmd) 6790mm

Explanation:We need to multiply 2mm by 8000 so we get 1600mm .1600mm is the same as 16mAdditional Information:Telescopes were first pointed into the sky by Galileo in the 1600s and have since revolutionised astronomy. In the many years since many improvements have been made to telescope. Click here to see how modern telescopes work: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/20937803

Hint

Example ChallengeME Questions (All)

Q4. Some elements are so rare that they have to be manufactured artificially. One example is curium 145 with a half life of about 18 years. A sample of mass 20g was made in 1945 (when it was manufactured). While working in the labs that year I secretly hid the sample and I plan to use it in my Zombies protection project in 2017. How much will be left by 2017?

A half life means after 18 years half of the sample is left.a) 5g.b) 1.25g.c) 1.11g.d) 1.25kg.

Explanation:There were 72 years between 1945 and 2017. Curium has a half life of 18 years so the sample would have decayed by half 4 times so in 1963 you would have 10g in 1981 you would have 5g in 1999 and in 2017 you would have 1.25g

You may have heard of half life before but the most radioactive elements are currently being manufactured in labs by scientist and have a half life.

Hint

Help: Use this figure to answer the question

Q5. North Korasas wishes to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Ubilitons. They will do this by firing an intercontinental Ballistic missile (ICBM). The missile flies at a speed of 200m/s and the distance between North Korasas and The Ubiliton republic is around 10,000km. how much time does the us have to prepare for the oncoming armageddon if the missile is detected at launch.

What is the formula for speed?

a) No point preparing.b) 13.9 hours.c) 5 hours.d) 5.2 hours.

Explanation:

Example ChallengeME Questions (All)

Hint

ConclusionImproving students’ accessibility to science.

Prizes given out + competitive environment.

Monitor students progress.

We will improve on existing platforms.

Financially sound project.

Thank you for listeningAny questions?