Cloud-Based Personalized Recommendations for Educators and Students
This project, developed for IMT 589 (Spring 2025), proposes a cloud-based recommender system — SmartEd — designed to transform the University of Washington’s (UW) fragmented academic planning experience. By integrating systems such as MyPlan, Canvas, and DARS into a unified, intelligent platform, SmartEd delivers personalized course, career, and content recommendations to both students and faculty
The US higher education sector is experiencing rapid digital transformation. Key trends include:
- AI-driven personalization in academic planning
- Hybrid/online learning adoption post-COVID
- Skills-first education models aligning with employability
- Rising pressure on institutions to balance affordability with innovation
UW’s current environment is challenged by:
- Outdated on-premise infrastructure limiting scalability and automation
- Fragmented user experience with disconnected planning tools (MyPlan, Canvas, DARS)
- Lack of personalization for student academic/career journeys
- Limited faculty insights into student progress and market needs
SmartEd is a cloud-native, AI-driven recommender system hosted on Microsoft Azure. It provides:
- For Students: Personalized course and career path recommendations
- For Faculty: AI-powered content, assignment, and emerging topic suggestions
- For UW-IT: Scalable, secure infrastructure reducing operational burden
Benefits include:
- Enhanced student retention and graduation rates
- Revenue growth via tuition premium and higher-value experiences
- Attraction of grants and corporate partnerships
- Operational efficiency through automation
- Migrate selected MyPlan and DARS components to Azure
- Deploy SmartEd as a pilot with secure integration
- Launch faculty dashboards using Power BI
- Create unified authentication with Azure Active Directory
- Complete migration of core academic systems to Azure
- Expand SmartEd with advanced AI features
- Establish an institutional analytics framework using Azure Synapse
- Explore hybrid/multi-cloud strategies for resilience and compliance
SmartEd leverages Microsoft Azure services for scalability, security, and intelligence:
- Identity & Access: Azure Active Directory
- Hosting: Azure App Service
- Data Storage: Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage
- AI/ML: Azure Machine Learning Studio
- Integration: Azure API Management, Logic Apps, Data Factory
- Monitoring & Security: Azure Monitor, Security Center
- Phased migration over 10–15 weeks using Azure DevOps and ARM templates
- CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, blue-green deployment, and monitoring
- Role-based access, encryption, and compliance enforcement for FERPA, HIPAA, and GLBA
SmartEd ensures alignment with:
- FERPA (student data protection)
- HIPAA (for student health data)
- GLBA (financial aid security)
- ADA Section 508 (accessibility standards)
- User Adoption Risk: Faculty and students may resist AI-driven workflows
- Bias in AI Models: Requires fairness auditing and iterative training
- Integration Complexity: API-based connections across multiple platforms
- Future Extensions:
- Expansion to other institutions
- Native mobile application
- Advanced analytics dashboards
- Faculty tools like AI-powered grading assistants
- Students: Unified dashboard with academic/career planning, skill progress tracking, and AI recommendations
- Faculty: Dashboards showing student performance, course demand, and dynamic content insights
- Support: Chatbots, virtual assistants, and proactive alerts integrated into the user journey