March 2024 - EduTec Science

Mar272024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

CORE Roundtable in Munich

Assessment, Critical Online Reasoning, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Project, Project meeting

Hendrik Drachsler, Sebastian Gombert and Gianluca Romano participated at the Roundtable in Munich for the CORE project (Critical Online Reasoning in Higher Education) from 04.03.-05.03.2024. In those two days, our team had the chance to recapitulate on how the infrastructure stood strong during the first survey from December 2023 to February 2024, and pave the way for next steps and surveys. In summary, the infrastructure performed well. It dealt with approximately 10Mio. requests per seconds and the majority of hurdles participants reported were out of our authority. Requests from participants were dealt with quickly in a few days on average. Even though we are proud of our achievements there is still a lot to be done for future surveys. For the agenda we split into smaller groups, each of us…

Mar202024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Interview in Zeit Online: Cell Phone Bans in Schools

Digitalisation, Press, School

In an interview with Zeit Online, Hendrik Drachsler explains his views on digitalization and cell phone bans in schools. He outlines that the hurdles associated with digitalization should be taken seriously, but that he is also very critical of extreme demands such as a complete ban on digitalization in schools. In his eyes it is important to differentiate between the usage of private devices and devices provided by the schools. Studies show that the use of private devices during the school day can distract students from learning and lower their concentration rates, for example during the private consummation of social media. On the other hand, the usage of tablets and AI during class can bring added value to the teaching process, especially while teaching complex concepts and with the individualization…

Mar202024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Didacta Presentation in Cologne: Key Questions to Find Fitting AI Solutions For Student Feedback

Artificial Intelligence, Feedback, General education, Invited talk, School

What are the goals of AI in education for student feedback? How can teachers make sure that their AI-assisted feedback goes beyond simple right/wrong statements and instead provides not only correct solutions, but also possibilities for improvement, hints on competence development and effective learning strategies? To find a fitting AI solution, there are key questions one should know to ask in advance. These questions were outlined by Hendrik Drachsler in his presentation at the didacta 2024 in Cologne on 20.02.2024 titled “Ihr KI-Anbieter-Test - 3 Schlüsselfragen die Sie kennen sollten.” The key questions: Question 1: What indicators does your AI product use to analyze learning outcomes? --> Look for AI products that provide relevant indicators for measuring learning progress and skills acquisition. These indicators are important to accurately assess learning…

Mar192024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Podcast “Sitzenbleiben” About AI in Education

Artificial Intelligence, General education, School

In a special edition of the DIPF podcast "Sitzenbleiben", Kai Maaz (Executive Director of DIPF) and Hendrik Drachsler discuss the potentials and hurdles of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into education. The conversation surrounding AI's capabilities and constraints has been rapidly gaining traction. Especially the emergence of large language models like ChatGPT has revolutionized the text creation process, which showcase the vast opportunities that AI technologies can bring to the education sector. Questions abound regarding AI's impact on education: How can AI impact tasks such as homework or exams? How can AI enrich lessons? Which data protection issues need to be considered? How can students and educators receive adequate support in navigating AI's integration into learning environments? These questions serve as focal points which are examined in this newly available podcast…

Mar192024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Celebrating Ioana Jivet’s New Adventure at Catalpa: A Farewell and Congratulations

Alumni, Team

In the midst of our busy lives between scholarly discourse and the clatter of keyboards, there are moments that stand out, moments of transition and reflection. In this blog post today, we bid farewell to a cherished colleague, Dr. Ioana Jivet, as she embarks on a new chapter of her journey as a Professor at CATALPA - Center of Advanced Technology for Assisted Learning and Predictive Analytics at the FernUniversität in Hagen. For nearly a decade, Ioana has been an integral part of our team, bringing not only her expertise but also her warmth and dedication. As analytics scientists we like diving into the numbers: from the start of Ioana’s time with us on June 1, 2021, until her your new start at CATALPA on March 1st, 2024, we've had…

Mar152024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: AI program doesn’t make kids better at math, but it makes them more independent

Assessment, Journal, Publication, School

Students who receive math tutoring from an artificial intelligence (AI) program perform no better than students who are taught by a "real" teacher. These students do, however, need less help learning. This is the conclusion of Rashmi Khazanchi from the Open University of the Netherlands together with Hendrik Drachsler and Daniele Di Mitri. Math Lessons with AI The researchers examined the effectiveness of the Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) tutoring program, called Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). Previous studies have shown that students learn math better using software than traditional teaching methods. Previous studies on ALEKS have also shown that, thanks to this program, students memorize more knowledge, perform better, experience more engagement in mathematics and drop out less. The advantage of an ITS like ALEKS is that it…

Mar62024 by Fernando P. Cardenas-HernandezNo Comments

Personalizing running training with immersive technologies using a multimodal framework

Journal, New Pub

To improve performance and prevent injuries, running training needs proper personalized supervision and planning. This study examines the factors that influence running training programs, and the benefits and challenges of personalized plans. It also investigates how multimodal, immersive and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can improve personalized training. We did an exploratory sequential mixed research with running coaches. We analyzed the data and found relevant factors of the training process. We recognized four key aspects for running training: physical, technical, mental and body awareness. We used these aspects to create a framework that proposes multimodal, immersive and AI technologies to help personalized running training. It also lets coaches guide their athletes on each aspect personally. The framework aims to personalize the training by showing how coaches and multimodal learning experience agents…

Mar22024 by Jane YauNo Comments

2nd GREAT Consortium Meeting in Copenhagen – 28-29 Feb 24

Project meeting

🎉 Celebrating One Year of GREAT - Games Realising Effective & Affective Transformation - EU & UKRI-funded project! Thanks to our SGI partner Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (& Tim Garder), we had the wonderful opportunity to be in Copenhagen for our second in-person project consortium meeting. It was a fantastic experience as all partners joined for 2 productive days of interactive workshops, capacity-building activities, interesting conversations and delicious meals. Special thanks to our associate partners Ahmed Tlili, who joined us all the way from Beijing Normal University, China, and Byron Bunt, who joined us virtually from Northwest University, South Africa! During the meeting, we deepened our analysis of our upcoming case studies to reach the promised scientific, societal and economic impact. Our first case study has been a hugely successful one with 400k citizens…

Mar22024 by Jane YauNo Comments

GREAT presentation at UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning

Invited talk

On 26 Feb 2024, Jane had the opportunity to present the EU & UKRI-funded GREAT project (Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation) at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning in Hamburg, Germany. From January to July 2024, Jane is a visiting researcher at this institute, where she will collaborate with UNESCO on publications on the use of technologies to facilitate education for sustainable development especially targeting climate change education. This fits very well in line with the GREAT project and provides many excellent opportunities on both sides to learn from each other's work.