With the ongoing pandemic which has left students mostly isolated at home, those struggling academically are not as easily able to arrange for consultations with teachers or otherwise seek help for their work as compared to before. Some students also may have social anxiety which makes them feel unable to speak up in order to seek help from teachers in school, leaving them in similar situations. These individuals may turn to online forums or homework-help websites for help, but we feel that this is a less than ideal solution and we can do better.
As of now, Reddit is a popular site for many students to venture into, in search of others to help them with their questions. Reddit is efficient in that it is inclusive. It allows for any user to answer questions at their own discretion, and ask questions with complete anonymity, thus making Reddit a welcoming platform for all students. Sadly, with inclusion comes the elimination of the need for dedicated tutors, which means responses might be slower, leaving the students confused for longer periods of time.
On the other hand, dedicated tutor bots that host tutors do remove the timing aspect of responses. Because there are tutors working round the clock, answers do come quickly. Yet, this comes at the expense of exclusivity, in that students cannot help other students. This may give rise to problems of lack of understanding, and tutors simply rushing to procure a premade response to every answer. Moreover, some of these bots also come with financial costs, with which students may not have the financial means to subscribe to.
As such, our platform aims to marry the contrasting worlds together. Project Lifeline is a platform that offers the speed of tutor bots in answering questions, whilst including the inclusivity that forums offer. It allows any and all students to post their questions on a common online space that any other student can see and access. From there, those who wish to answer questions will be able to select from available questions, and once resolved, the questions will be automatically taken down from the common online space so as to prevent one from getting too many replies as time passes. Using Project Lifeline, it would give many access to a level of fast, personalised and inclusive tutoring that would be hard to have now, and in the future, given that Covid-19 has caused face-to-face interactions to be less than practical.
Unlike Q&A forums or help websites like StackOverflow, Lifeline grants real-time help with real-life students. It prioritises efficiency in ensuring a 30-min rule: A question will only be hosted for 30 minutes after the user goes offline, and deleted or allowed for askers to re-upload once it elapses. This is to ensure askers are regularly online and can immediately respond when an asker is available to help them, so as to not waste anybody's time.
Moreover, on the note of tutors lacking understanding in students’ problems, Lifeline can solve that issue as well. Because Lifeline involves users who are students as well, understanding is what makes explanations by fellow users of our bot much more empathetic, which allows the two parties to connect on an emotional level. Tutors on other help service platforms are also often hidden behind paywalls and only offer limited help based on how much of their time you pay for, unlike our bot which allows anyone who is able to help to reach out to those in need. Ultimately, Lifeline is for students, by students.
[Why lifeline help with social anxiety - Anonymity] Project lifeline gives users the veil of anonymity, this will benefit users who are especially shy, or have difficulty interacting with others in real life. Letting them interact with anonymity, giving them the confidence to start interacting with others online. Slowly, they will gain more and more confidence in interacting with others, and this confidence will eventually apply to their offline lives as well, giving them what they need to overcome their social anxiety.
Apart from the usual academic subjects, Lifeline also allows juniors to tap on the wealth of knowledge that is their seniors, allowing them to seek advice in various areas, whether it is help in deciding their future profession, or any of their burning questions regarding what life holds in store for them as well as how to best prepare for the challenges that await. Simply put, instantaneous life-coaching. However it is by no means a substitute for the current life coaching that takes place in schools. Instead, our platform serves to supplement these existing programs by allowing students regardless of background to further glean valuable knowledge from various seniors who can confidently say "been there, done that". Thus, even as a small side feature of our project, we believe it still has tremendous potential to positively impact the lives of students who use our bot.
Project Lifeline uses a Telegram bot API as its front end to interact with users. The back end uses the node red framework to process user utterances and categorizes their responses to generate the bot’s responses where users are sorted and paired according to their academic subject of interest and education level.
The node red framework allows us the keep development process as visual as possible to let us zone in on how the structure of such a bot would work and the telegram front end makes it accessible to all.
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