SkillNet

SkillNet¶

SkillNet is an experimental skill graph for modeling what students know and how their competencies evolve over time. It treats skills as nodes in a network and uses assessment data to update estimates of student mastery.

The goal is to give instructors and researchers a clearer picture of which skills are strong or weak, and how performance on one concept relates to another.

Where This Project Fits¶

flowchart LR
  Assessments[Test Forge / Psephos<br/>Assessments] --> Skills[SkillNet<br/>Skill Graph]
  Skills --> Analytics[Analytics & Recommendations]
  Skills --> Teams[Student Team Formation]

• Test Forge and Psephos can tag questions with skills and send results into SkillNet
• SkillNet can feed analytics dashboards or recommendations back to instructors
• Team formation tools can use skill vectors to balance teams and project assignments

What You Could Work On¶

• Design representations for skills, relationships, and evidence (assessment events)
• Prototype graph-based models for estimating student mastery and progression
• Build small visualizations or APIs for instructors to inspect skill graphs
• Experiment with using SkillNet to drive targeted practice or team formation

Core Concepts & Tech¶

• Modeling: nodes = skills, edges = relationships (prereq, similarity, reinforcement)
• Signals: assessment scores, survey responses, behavioral events
• Tech: Python; graph libraries or graph databases; APIs to ingest and query data

Early work is happening in the SkillNet GitHub repo; the project is open to new ideas and prototypes.