Area9 Solutions for the Public Sector

The secret to Rhapsode’s success is the idea of personalization. Built on more than 50 years of academic research into cognition and human factors, Area9 and its partners have delivered hundreds of millions of adaptive learning experiences using thousands of personalized products.

Rhapsode approaches learning in a smarter and more intelligent way, enabling people to learn and retain information faster and better, while providing a detailed overview of learners’ knowledge and knowledge gaps. In doing so, Rhapsode makes the learning experience far more efficient; it becomes a powerful addition to other learning methods because it serves as an “always available tutor,” providing the right information at the right time, including refreshing learning to “make it stick.”

Rhapsode uses a large number of factors, such as granular measures of proficiency, confidence, time, and self-awareness, to accurately measure each learner’s weak and strong areas and to identify any misconceptions they may hold. Rather than simply presenting learning content, as almost all other platforms do, Rhapsode makes extensive use of self-reflection and in-the-flow assessments. In real-time, it determines where to put more emphasis, where to remediate, and where to save time by avoiding redundant content. Resulting learning experiences are unique to each learner and determined automatically, despite using the same underlying content.

Rhapsode’s personalization engine (what we call the “biological adaptive engine”) collects and analyses learner and content data in real-time. The resulting learning analysis includes a detailed outline of learning progress, estimated time to completion, most challenging learning objectives, and metacognitive skills (actual knowledge vs. perceived knowledge). This instant feedback enables learners, teachers, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to better understand where they should focus their efforts.

Although Rhapsode’s primary design goal is learner-centric, its capabilities encompass the full content lifecycle.From rich analytics in Rhapsode EDUCATOR™ to powerful authoring, workflows and role-based access control in Rhapsode CURATOR™, to on-the-job performance capture with Rhapsode SKILLS™, Area9 Rhapsode is designed to deliver the best return on investment of any learning platform.

Rhapsode LEARNER™ delivers the personalized end-user learning experience and includes Area9’s research-backed “biological adaptive engine”. Fully responsive to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile, Rhapsode LEARNER provides an intuitive, clean, HTML5 experience that removes distractions to achieve effective, efficient, engaging outcomes.

Rhapsode LEARNER can be launched directly from a browser or an iOS or Android app, or from a learning management system via the SCORM or LTI standards.Data is pushed back to the LMS, with more detailed data captured in Rhapsode EDUCATOR™. Data can also be written to a learning record store using xAPI. The Rhapsode LEARNER interface can be modified and branded with logos and colors using admin tools within Rhapsode PUBLISHER™.

Rhapsode CURATOR is our authoring platform for courses, quizzes, exams, adaptive textbooks, ePub documents and PDFs. It contains a learning content management system that supports full reusability of components and powerful tagging capabilities. Rhapsode CURATOR supports multi-byte and right-to-left languages, is available in more than a dozen languages and supports content authoring in any language.

Users can create content from scratch and import content in a variety of formats, including video. Rhapsode CURATOR makes extensive use of templates to simplify authoring, with AI support for text-to-speech, translations and readability. It has built-in support for localization and digital rights management.

Rhapsode CURATOR includes Rhapsode BRIDGE™, an AI-powered ingestion tool for documents and video with OCR and speech-to-text capabilities. Rhapsode BRIDGE can convert legacy Flash courses to responsive and adaptive courses, or ingest other training content.

Content can be published for consumption in Rhapsode LEARNER via classes created in Rhapsode EDUCATOR, or can be published in SCORM or LTI format for 3^rd party learning management system.

Rhapsode PUBLISHER brings additional functionality to Rhapsode CURATOR for larger teams. Publisher introduces full role-based access control (RBAC) providing fine control over who can view and modify content, and includes Rhapsode WORKFLOW™ – a powerful technology that simplifies the management and dramatically reduces the cost of content creation and maintenance.

For publishers and large talent development organizations within corporations, Rhapsode PUBLISHER provides the tools necessary for both print and digital content production and is customizable to be able to meet the unique needs of each. Rhapsode PUBLISHER scales from dozens to thousands of authors, projects and products.

Area9 Rhapsode is a data-rich learning environment, and Rhapsode EDUCATOR provides the primary reporting and analytics engine. Rhapsode EDUCATOR also provides all the tools necessary to create online classes, eliminating the need for a separate learning management system. It provides off-the-shelf reports, plus custom dashboards and custom reports.

Rhapsode READER is a companion to Rhapsode LEARNER that is optimized for adaptive e-books. It bridges the gap between manuals or textbooks and personalized learning. It combines textual material with multimedia such as video or simulation and includes highlighting, note taking, bookmarking, and search. Like Rhapsode LEARNER, it is fully responsive across all screen sizes and offers progressive web apps for iOS and Android.

Rhapsode SKILLS complements Rhapsode LEARNER and Rhapsode READER by providing on-the-job assessment of skills and performance.Rhapsode SKILLS enables individuals to evaluate their own performance, gives managers, instructors, coaches or facilitators tools to measure learning transfer and provide feedback, and links outcomes directly to learning interventions for a complete 360º view of talent development.

Rhapsode COMMUNICATOR provides asynchronous communication throughout the Rhapsode suite and can be accessed via Rhapsode CURATOR, Rhapsode EDUCATOR and Rhapsode LEARNER. It provides group forum features that can optionally be linked to Rhapsode EDUCATOR classes.Rhapsode COMMUNICATOR also includes Rhapsode CONTENT CARE™ - a global view of all content feedback, further simplifying the content maintenance process.

The biological adaptive engine is based on systematic, semantic mapping of learning objectives and desirable learning outcomes, and takes learning diagnostics, the approach to learning, and knowledge retention to an unprecedented level. It is based on more than a dozen scientific findings in cognitive psychology about knowledge acquisition and retention. It has advanced, predictive modeling of decay of knowledge; it has built-in abilities to remediate at multiple levels of granularity; and it eliminates unnecessary time for learning by avoiding rehearsal of already acquired knowledge based on the advanced, differential prediction of knowledge decay.

Area9 Rhapsode courses are structured around granular learning objectives, probes (formative assessment questions and problems, shown in green) and learning resources (shown in blue), such as in the extract, below, from a medical course.

The adaptive engine navigates the tree of learning objectives, requiring the learner to interact with probes and learning resources when it identifies that the learner is struggling or is interested in learning more. An example of a probe is shown below:

Depending on the learner’s proficiency, confidence and speed, interactions happens every 15-180 seconds.

It is called the ‘biological’ model because it models and mimics the way the brain learns. Compared to other models based on ‘branches,’ the biological model makes it faster to author courses since the focus is on the learning objectives and learning outcomes rather than trying to build a massive grid of possible pathways. Furthermore, the biological model ensures that users do not end up in ‘dead ends’ which is often the case when using branching to build courses.

Although they are authored linearly, the learner experience of Area9 Rhapsode™ adaptive courses is anything but linear. The image below shows the results of the biological model for three learners.Each circle represents a learning objective, and the size of the circle the effort it took to master that objective. Though all three learners took the same course, the resultant paths were very distinct.

These personalized paths are the optimal path to mastery for each learner. Gaps are filled, misconceptions are overcome and higher levels of competence result. This is often achieved in a net shorter time, as the system avoids teaching content that the learner can already demonstrate proficiency in.