Journal Archives - EduTec Science

Apr162024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: Feedback sources in essay writing: peer-generated or AI-generated feedback?

Artificial Intelligence, Empirical Study, Feedback, Further Education, Journal, Publication

A newly published article discusses the use of peer feedback as a learning strategy, particularly in large classes where teachers face heavy workloads. For complex tasks like writing argumentative essays, peers may struggle to provide high-quality feedback due to the cognitive demands involved. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, like ChatGPT, raises the question of whether AI can serve as a new feedback source for such tasks. To investigate this, a study compared ChatGPT-generated feedback with peer feedback on argumentative essays written by 74 graduate students from a Dutch university. The study collected essay data, peer feedback and ChatGPT-generated feedback, and then analyzed them using coding schemes. Results showed significant differences between ChatGPT and peer feedback, with ChatGPT offering more descriptive feedback while peers focused on identifying essay problems.…

Apr152024 by Dana KubeNo Comments

New Publication: Addressing gender in STEM classrooms: The impact of gender bias on women scientists’ experiences in higher education careers in Germany

New Pub

In an expert study conducted in Germany, Dana Kube and her research team delve into the complex dynamics of gender bias within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classrooms. The study, aimed at understanding the role gender plays in shaping the experiences of women scientists in higher education, sheds light on the challenges they face and proposes strategies for fostering gender inclusivity in STEM classrooms. The primary objective of the study was two-fold: first, to comprehensively examine the influence of gender and gender bias in STEM environments within higher education institutions, and second, to identify potential areas where Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) pedagogical interventions could mitigate these biases among students and teachers in German STEM departments. Employing the innovative group concept mapping method, the research team collaborated with women participants…

Apr112024 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

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…

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…

Jan292024 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

New Pub: From the Automated Assessment of Student Essay Content to Highly Informative Feedback: a Case Study

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Computational Psychometrics, Empirical Study, Feedback, Higher Education, Journal, Publication, Special Issue, Technical paper

How can we give students highly informative feedback on their essays using natural language processing? In our new paper, led by Sebastian Gombert, we present a case study on using GBERT and T5 models to generate feedback for educational psychology students. In this paper: ➡ We implemented a two-step pipeline that segments the essays and predicts codes from the segments. The codes are used to generate feedback texts informing the students about the correctness of their solutions and the content areas they need to improve. ➡ We used 689 manually labelled essays as training data for our models. We compared GBERT, T5, and bag-of-words baselines for both steps. The results showed that the transformer-based models outperformed the baselines in both steps. ➡ We evaluated the feedback with a learner cohort…

Jan152024 by Dana KubeNo Comments

New Article – Gender diversity dynamics in a Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

Artificial Intelligence, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Digitalisation, Empirical Study, Gender, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Design, New Pub, Open access, Publication, Special Issue, Team

🎉 Exciting News! Our article has just been published in the magazine of Computer Assisted Learning! 📰 We delved into the fascinating world of online group learning among adults, unravelling the mysteries of emergent team roles and their intricate connection to gender dynamics in communication. 🌐👥 Have you ever wondered how team roles subtly surface and evolve in online group learning discussions? We did, too! Our research explores the subtle nuances of team roles and their subversive emergence, especially when viewed through the lens of gender diversity, in order to understand how to support more productive learning for all participants. Gender and gender diversity are group features affecting social interaction and are critical for gender-inclusive and equitable education. As such, the role of gender and gender diversity is of particular…

Jan122024 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New Pub: Toward a comprehensive framework of social presence

Computer-supported collaborative learning, Higher Education, Journal, Literature review, New Pub, Open access, Special Issue

Today, students in higher education likely come into contact with different modes of learning, e.g. online learning, blended learning, and, increasingly, hybrid learning. To the extent that communication is mediated by technology in these learning modes, students can experience varying degrees of social presence with regard to their peers. Social presence refers to the feeling that others are 'real' and 'close' despite the physical separation. Especially in learning scenarios that require communication and collaboration, social presence is a crucial consideration. Despite this, research on social presence is fragmented and many other relevant theoretical accounts, while potentially informative, have been neglected. This paper, coauthored by Karel Kreijns, Jane Yau, Joshua Weidlich, and Armin Weinberger, published in Frontiers in Education, Section Digital Education, attempts to provide a comprehensive account of social presence…

Jan42024 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

How to improve Knowledge Tracing with hybrid machine learning techniques

Journal, New Pub

Knowledge Tracing is a well-known problem in AI for Education. It consists of monitoring how the student's knowledge changes during the learning process and accurately predicting their performance in future exercises. But how can we improve the current methods and overcome their limitations? In recent years, many advances have been made thanks to various machine learning and deep learning techniques. However, they have some pitfalls, such as modelling one skill at a time, ignoring the relationships between different skills, or inconsistent predictions, i.e. sudden spikes and falls across time steps. In our recently published systematic literature review, we aim to illustrate the state of the art in this field. Specifically, we want to identify the potential and the frontiers in integrating prior knowledge sources in the traditional machine learning pipeline…

Dec12023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New pub: Measuring Efficacy of ALEKS as a Supportive Instructional Tool in K-12 Math Classroom with Underachieving Students

Assessment, Journal, New Pub, Publication, School

In a recent quasi-experimental research study, the effectiveness of Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS), an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), took center stage in the realm of 8th-grade mathematics education. The study aimed to determine whether ALEKS could bring a statistically significant improvement in students' mathematics achievement compared to traditional teacher-led instructions. The research involved 158 8th-grade students categorized as 'underachieving students, with 60 in the teacher-led group and 98 in the ALEKS-led group. The study used a non-randomized approach to compare the outcomes of teacher-led instructions to ALEKS-led instructions over two consecutive years. In the first year McGraw's curriculum "Reveal" was used exclusively without ALEKS. In the second year ALEKS was incorporated as a supplemental tool in a math support class. The study incorporated a rigorous methodology, utilizing…