ACORN-Edu: Deadline-Aware Prefetching for Learners With Intermittent Connectivity

We present ACORN-Edu, a deadline-aware prefetching system combining content-defined chunking (CDC), delta synchronization, and multi-factor scheduling for learners with intermittent connectivity. The scheduler prioritizes content using deadline urgency, chunk reuse, file size, and connectivity-aware finishability scoring, with weights tunable per deployment scenario. Evaluation across two scenarios, nightly Wi-Fi (~900,000 KB budget) and spotty cellular (intermittent bursts, ~24,000 KB budget), shows ACORN-Edu achieves 90% hit-rate vs. 60% baseline (Wi-Fi) and 20% vs. 0% (cellular) with minimal bandwidth overhead (4% and 1%). Statistical tests confirm highly significant improvements (p3.0). Ablation studies reveal urgency and reuse drive hit-rate gains under favorable connectivity, while all components optimize efficiency under scarcity. Full artifacts available at https://github.com/divineiloh/ACORN-Edu.