Patent Document ID: 8433237
Application ID: 12484927

Base Claim:
1. A method implemented on a computing device having a processor for designing an academic course, comprising: using the computing device having the processor to perform the following: selecting a natural interaction forum; attaching a rubric to the selected natural interaction forum, wherein the rubric is a template used for assessing the learner's knowledge of the topic; assigning to the learner a natural interaction assignment in the selected natural interaction forum to assess the learner's knowledge of the topic; creating tags for the learner's posts in the natural interaction forum that matches information in the learner's posts to topics in the rubric; assessing the learner's knowledge of the topic with the natural interaction assignment to generate assessment results based at least in part on the created tags for the learner's posts; and computing a final score of the learner on the natural interaction assignment from the assessment results.

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Claim 9:
9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising accumulating each of the tags associated with the learner to define the tagging metric for the learner.