Girls and Women in STEM Forum of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT)

Girls and Women in STEM Forum of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT)

Artificial Intelligence, Award, Conference, Digitalisation, Event, Transfer Activity
Our Co-Worker Dana Kube was selected to be a jury member of this year's Girls and Women in STEM Award of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) in Budapest. Read her report: I'm still buzzing with the energy from the Women and Girls in STEM Forum 2024! It was an inspiring day filled with conversations on AI, inclusion, and the future of STEM with girls and women from all over Europe. The keynote speakers, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen and Ilaria Tagliavini, emphasised the urgent need for more women to lead the next generation of scientists in Europe, highlighting the European Commission’s commitment to this mission through strategic plans for STEM education. Ilaria celebrated Girls Go Circular’s expansion to 32 countries, recognising the need for a mindset shift towards greater…
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PhD Defense: A Deep Dive into Visual Learning Analytics

PhD Defense: A Deep Dive into Visual Learning Analytics

Award, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, PhD defense, School
On September 13th, Hendrik Drachsler took on the esteemed role of opponent in the PhD defense of Artemis Mohseni at Linnaeus University, Sweden. The defense, which marked a pivotal moment in Artemis’s academic journey, centered around her innovative doctoral thesis titled "Development of Visual Learning Analytics Tools to Explore Performance and Engagement of Students in Primary, Secondary, and Higher Education." The evaluation commission was formed by: Associate professor Olga Viberg, Royal Institute of Technolgy, Sweden Associate professor Linnéa Stenliden, Linköpings University, Sweden Professor Johan Lundin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Associate professor Fisnik Dalipi, Linnaeus University, Sweden Associate professor Arianit Kurti, Linnaeus University, Sweden It was an exciting defense that showcased Artemis’s research, which focuses on the potential of Visual Learning Analytics (VLA) to enhance teaching and learning by providing actionable…
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Dr. Daniel Schiffner Receives the First Edutec Award

Dr. Daniel Schiffner Receives the First Edutec Award

Award, Team
The newly created Edutec Prize was awarded to Dr. Daniel Schiffner, a leading supporter of the Edutec team. He has shown exceptional commitment to keeping the educational technologies up and running and restoring the systems after the cyber attack. [caption id="attachment_6284" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Hendrik Drachsler and the Edutec team congratulate Dr. Daniel Schiffner on this achievement.[/caption] A Trailblazer in Education Technology Dr. Daniel Schiffner serves as the Arbeitsbereichsleiter (Head of Department) for Bildungsinformatik (Educational Informatics) at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. His work focuses on leveraging technology to enhance teaching and learning processes. Dr. Schiffner’s expertise lies at the intersection of education, data science, and digital tools. Together with his team, he enables educational researchers to make use of state of the art technologies.…
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Team led by Sebastian Gombert wins one of two tracks at BEA 2024 shared task on predicting Item Difficulty and Item Response Time

Team led by Sebastian Gombert wins one of two tracks at BEA 2024 shared task on predicting Item Difficulty and Item Response Time

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Award, Computational Psychometrics, Conference, Higher Education, New Pub, Workshop
For standardized exams to be fair and reliable, they must include a diverse range of question difficulties to accurately assess test taker abilities. Additionally, it's crucial to balance the time allotted per question to avoid making the test unnecessarily rushed or sluggish. The goal of this year's BEA shared task (competition) was to build systems which could predict Item Difficulty and Item Response Time for items taken from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). EduTec member Sebastian Gombert designed systems which are able to predict both variables simultaneously. These placed first out of 43 for predicting Item Difficulty and fitfth out of 34 for predicting Item Response Time. They use modified versions of established transformer language models in a multitask setup. A corresponding system description paper titled Predicting Item…
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PhD defense on Technological Responses to Distracting Media Multitasking in Digital Learning Environments

PhD defense on Technological Responses to Distracting Media Multitasking in Digital Learning Environments

Award, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, PhD defense, School, Self-Regulation
Today, we proudly acknowledge the remarkable achievement of our team member, Daniel Biedermann, in successfully defending his PhD thesis to become Dr. Biedermann. Woohoo, congratulations! In our modern world, the reality of digital distractions through the attention economy cannot be denied. Countries like the Netherlands, for instance, are planning to ban mobiles from classrooms starting from 2024. Daniel's PhD work centered on the complex challenges of digital media distraction, a phenomenon that's prevalent largely due to our pervasive use of social media and notification systems on our phones, PCs, and tablets. Presented in his disputation, Daniel argued the need for a context-sensitive system to gain a more profound understanding of digital media distraction. In addition, Daniel addressed the crucial subject of digital self-control tools (DSCTs). His research, which provided a…
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Best Short Paper Award Nomination @LAK23

Best Short Paper Award Nomination @LAK23

Award, Conference, Conference, Higher Education, Learning Analytics
The protection of students’ privacy in learning analytics (LA) applications is critical for cultivating trust and effective implementations of LA in educational environments around the world. However, students’ privacy concerns and how they may vary along demographic dimensions that historically influence these concerns have yet to be studied in higher education. Gender differences, in particular, are known to be associated with people's information privacy concerns, including in educational settings. Building on an empirically validated model and survey instrument for student privacy concerns, their antecedents and their behavioral outcomes, we investigate the presence of gender differences in students’ privacy concerns about LA. We conducted a survey study of students in higher education across five countries (N = 762): Germany, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Using multiple regression analysis,…
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EC-TEL2022 best demo award goes to EduTec

EC-TEL2022 best demo award goes to EduTec

Award, Conference
The demo paper Superpowers in the Classroom: Hyperchalk is an Online Whiteboard for Learning Analytics Data Collection and the corresponding tool Hyperchalk by Lukas Menzel, Sebastian Gombert, Daniele Di Mitri and Hendrik Drachsler were awarded the best demo award at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2022. Hyperchalk allows hosting collaborative whiteboards which can be used to collaborate in real-time. It collects rich user data which can be used to conduct learning analytics. Hyperchalk was initially developed for the ALICE project.
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DGHD Nachwuchspreis for Joshua Weidlich

DGHD Nachwuchspreis for Joshua Weidlich

Award, Conference, Higher Education, PhD defense
At this year's DGHD2022 in Paderborn, the German Society for Higher Education Pedagogy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hochschuldidaktik: DGHD) awarded Dr. Joshua Weidlich for his dissertation on the topic of social presence in online distance education. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Theo Bastiaens, he conducted his dissertation at FernUniversität in Hagen, the largest distance education provider in Germany. The jury commended the scientific merits of advancing this line of research while also providing ample practical implications for higher education teaching. The dissertation is available online here and further information about the award will be published here.
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EARLI EFG Grant awarded

EARLI EFG Grant awarded

Award
The European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) offers an Emerging Field Group (EFG) funding scheme. The goal of the EFG initiative is to support the development of a research group focused on exploratory, innovative, and risk-taking research. EARLI supports the EFG over the course of a two-year period. See the following video for a short intro about EFG funding: [embed]https://youtu.be/P3ErXQdLU2U[/embed] This year, the EARLI EFG committee awarded funding to the "Social- and Telepresence in Online Social Learning" emerging field group, which consists of Emmy Vrieling Teunter (Open University, Netherlands), Kamakshi Rajagopal (KU Leuven, Belgium), Karel Kreijns (Open University, Netherlands), Maartje Henderikx (Open University, Netherlands), Derya Orhan Göksün (Adiyaman University, Turkey), and Joshua Weidlich (DIPF, Germany). The group will explore how perceptions of social-and telepresence are fostered in…
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Daniele Di Mitri becomes a fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy

Daniele Di Mitri becomes a fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy

Award
On Friday 29th of April, Dr Daniele Di Mitri has been awarded as a fellow of the Johanna Quandt Young Academy of Goethe University an organization that gathers early career researchers at Goethe University, TU Darmstadt, University of Mainz and collaborating institutes such as DIPF. The Johanna Quandt Young Academy is a  platform to share knowledge across disciplines and to learn about research approaches of other disciplines. It brings together young scientists and outstanding leaders of the international science community to debate about and generate new ideas and concepts for defined topics and formulate science-based solutions for the future development of society with the intention of forming a strong voice to impact university and global development through policy statements. The Award Ceremony featured welcome speeches by Prof. Dr Enrico Schleiff,…
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