Publication Archives - EduTec Science

Nov142025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

LAMASS@DiLea Study Report and Data Set Now Published

Empirical Study, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Project, Publication, Report

What factors influence academic success and dropout rates in digital study formats at universities? What factors and effects at the subjective, curricular and institutional levels can be empirically measured and how do they interact in digital study formats? Can a factor analysis be used to compare digital and face-to-face study formats? The LAMASS@DiLea project team now present the answers to these questions in the newly published project report “LAMASS-Studie: Studienerfolg und Studienabbruch in digitalen Studienformaten”. It is a comprehensive analysis of academic success and dropout rates in digital study formats. The results of the study are valuable for existing digital study formats and for degree programs that wish to boost their use of digital technology. The dataset has also been published and is available to download. Modell des Studienabbruchs in…

Nov132025 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

New Pub: GRIPF at TSAR 2025 Shared Task Towards controlled CEFR level simplification with the help of inter-model interactions

New Pub

Language learners make the fastest progress when reading texts that match their proficiency level. But most real-world texts are too hard—and manually adapting them is time-consuming. So the big question is: Can AI automatically simplify texts to a specific CEFR level without losing meaning? We explored exactly this in the TSAR 2025 Shared Task, where systems had to rewrite advanced English texts (B2+) to easier levels like A2 or B1. Our team submitted two different approaches: EZ-SCALAR and SAGA. EZ-SCALAR works like an expert panel of AI models. Two large language models (GPT-5 and Claude) each produce their own simplification, critique each other, refine their versions, and then a final “judge” model picks the best result. An extended version, EZ-SCALAR Lex, adds something extra: a vocabulary check using EFLLex, a…

Nov132025 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

New Pub: Characterizing students’ energy learning trajectories

New Pub

Helping students apply energy ideas to everyday situations is a core goal in physics education. But not all students get there—and it’s not just about who knows the most content. In a 10-week classroom study with 165 students, we tracked both their energy understanding and their affective and metacognitive factors (like emotions, cognitive load, and self-regulation). Using k-means clustering on their learning trajectories, we identified three distinct student groups that differed in the coherence of their energy knowledge development. The key insight: Students who learned the most also felt more positive, experienced lower cognitive load, and used stronger metacognitive strategies. Those who struggled often felt overwhelmed or disengaged. The takeaway is clear: supporting emotions and self-regulation is just as important as teaching physics content. Instruction that addresses these factors can…

Nov62025 by Nina MouhammadNo Comments

New Pub: From Nervous to Noteworthy: Evaluating SPEAKS

Competence development, Conference, Conference, Higher Education

Public speaking can be nerve-wracking, but it’s also a skill every professional needs. Many students leave higher education feeling unprepared to speak confidently in front of an audience. Traditional courses exist, but providing enough guidance to every student is time- and resource-intensive. This is where SPEAKS comes in. SPEAKS (Speech content Preparation for Effective and Authentic Knowledge Sharing) is an educational software designed to guide students through preparing the content of their speeches. The tool and its evaluation were presented at ECEL 2025 in a paper authored by Nina Mouhammad, Jan Schneider, Roland Klemke and Daniele Di Mitri as part of the HyTea-project, highlighting its potential to support students in developing better speech content and becoming more confident regarding public speaking. The tool uses a fully scripted, chat-based interface with…

Oct312025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: Optimizing Formative Assessment with Learning Analytics

Assessment, Learning Analytics, Literature review, New Pub

The teaching and learning processes in education need to be effective. This is something that all parents, teachers and educational scientists can agree on. To help us track the learners’ achievements and educational progress and ultimately show whether the teaching and learning processes are effective, we rely on formative assessment. Learning analytics has the potential to assist in formative assessment. So far there has not been enough evidence collected to prove this potential support. Thus, many have reservations about the connection between the results of learning analytics and formative assessment models. If the results from learning analytics don’t match well with formative assessment approaches, teachers may be reluctant to trust, understand or use those insights to guide their teaching. This issue is addressed in a recently published study which introduces…

Oct312025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: ChatGPT in Education

Journal, New Pub, Research Methods

Early studies on the usage of ChatGPT in educational settings have reported substantial learning gains from ChatGPT applications. But how valid are these studies? Is using ChatGPT in education really as effective as it seems? A newly published paper takes a deeper look at key findings from past debates about media and teaching methods to reveal frequent conceptual challenges that arise in studies about the effectiveness of ChatGPT. When researchers compare different types of media for learning, they sometimes mix up the effects of the teaching style with the features of the technology. If the instructional methods and the technological features are confused with one another, it makes it difficult to be able to interpret the actual effect of ChatGPT. To help pinpoint the conceptual difficulties of these efficacy studies,…

Sep172025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: Design, Development and Evaluation of HILA

Artificial Intelligence, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Publication

How can AI-supported learning analytics be integrated into educational processes in a significant way? How can they be designed, tested and further developed to effectively improve teaching and learning practices? These questions were addressed by Hendrik Drachsler in his keynote at the Learning AID 2024 in Bochum, which has recently been published in the conference proceeding “Learning Analytics, Artificial Intelligence und Data Mining in der Hochschulbildung”. In his keynote, Hendrik stresses the importance of content-specific applications that address genuine educational needs and are supported by empirical evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. The key to fostering adaptive and sustainable learning experiences is to understand and accommodate learners’ individual needs. Hendrik argues that technological progress alone is not sufficient to improve education. His ongoing research shows that AI-supported learning analytics can only bring…

Jul282025 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

New Pub: TBA at BEA 2025 Shared Task: Transfer-Learning from DARE-TIES Merged Models for the Pedagogical Ability Assessment of LLM-Powered Math Tutors

New Pub

In the BEA 2025 Shared Task on Pedagogical Ability Assessment of AI-Powered Tutors, the goal was to evaluate how well LLM-based math tutors support students. The task focused on four aspects of feedback: spotting mistakes identifying where the mistake happens giving guidance providing actionable suggestions For our submission, we built on FLAN-T5 models with a multi-step training pipeline. In addition to standard fine-tuning, we used model merging (DARE-TIES) to leverage information across all four labels – and saw clear improvements over plain fine-tuning. Our models achieved F1 scores between 52 and 69 and accuracies between 62% and 87%, ranking 11th, 8th, 11th, and 9th across the four tracks. Link to the paper: Link

Jul212025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: How Feedback Literacy Moderates Student Perceptions of Feedback

Feedback, Higher Education, Journal, New Pub

Whether or not students receive effective feedback can have a big impact on their overall learning process. The more qualitative and personalized the feedback is, the more effective it is in supporting the students with their individual learning goals. The latest developments in learning analytics and artificial intelligence have made it possible to provide a large number of students with personalized feedback automatically and simultaneously. Despite these technical advances, there is still much to be learned about the ability of students to use this feedback for their scholastic benefit. So far, only a limited number of studies have examined the impact of feedback literacy on students' perceptions of feedback, which is particularly true for technology-enhanced learning environments. A newly published paper addresses this issue and focuses on how students interpret…

Jun272025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: How Learners Interpret and Respond to Feedback in Learning Analytics Dashboards

Feedback, Journal, New Pub, Self-Regulation

Online learning platforms can generate a great amount of data about how students engage in the learning process. This data is used to develop learning analytics dashboards as feedback tools to assist students in self-regulating their learning. But how do students use these tools to self-reflect? And how can they use the information provided by learning analytics dashboards (LAD) in a meaningful way? In a new publication these questions are explored using the data from an experimental study with 417 students, which investigated how the students interpret and respond to feedback from LADs. In the study, the students were divided into 2 groups: A treatment group was given personalized self-regulated learning (SRL) feedback from the LAD on the basis of interactions and progress; A control group was given minimal feedback…