Conference: Demo and paper presentations at EARLI 2023

Conference: Demo and paper presentations at EARLI 2023

Artificial Intelligence, Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Self-Regulation, Workshop
This year, the biannual EARLI conference took place between 21-26 August 2023 in Thessaloniki, Greece and EduTec member Ioana Jivet represented DIPF with two contributions. The 1.5-hour ICT demo Closing the Feedback Loop - A Moodle Plugin for (Semi-)automated Feedback introduced participants to the work of PhD student Tornike Giorgashvili, supervised by Hendrik Drachsler and Ioana Jivet, and the outcomes of the HIKOF project: LearnDashPlus, a Moodle plugin which helps teachers provide written feedback in large courses. This tool also prompts students to reflect on the feedback they received and allows teachers to explore if such feedback helps students to understand their learning behavior and improve their learning performance. Our tool is intended to work as an educational intervention and an instrument of dialogue between teachers and students and thus closing…
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HyTea Consortium Meeting in Cologne

HyTea Consortium Meeting in Cologne

Artificial Intelligence, Competence development, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Project, Project meeting
How can software support presentation skills training? How can AI be used responsibly in this context? What to take from traditional presentation skills training and what to do completely different? In the HyTea consortium meeting, we discussed these questions but also many others and took important decisions on what to focus on in the HyTea project. We started preparing the needed knowledge needed for these critical decisions a few months ago when conducting interviews with presentation training experts. We asked them how they train presentation skills, how students should prepare a presentation and how they think AI or technology in general could support in presentation skills training. Furthermore, we also discussed concerns the experts had regarding AI usage in this context. In preparation of the consortium meeting, we synthesized all…
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Exploring the Future of Chatbots in Education: Insights from DeGEval 2023

Exploring the Future of Chatbots in Education: Insights from DeGEval 2023

Artificial Intelligence, Conference, Invited talk, Lifelong Learning
We're excited to share highlights from the recent DeGEval 2023 conference in Magdeburg, where our DIPF Edutec team was part of. DeGEval: A Hub for Evaluation - DeGEval, or the Society for Evaluation, is renowned for bridging academia and industry. It's dedicated to enhancing education through rigorous evaluation methods. Sebastian Wollny's Presentation - At the conference, Sebastian Wollny, alongside Claudia Zaviska from BIBB, Anne Küttel from University of Saarland, and Ricarda Schlimbach from Hochschule Heilbronn, showcased DIPF research on chatbots in vocational education. Attendees showed keen interest and shared their own experiences. Sebastian also presented findings from his literature review titled "Are We There Yet? - A Systematic Literature Review on Chatbots in Education," shedding light on the latest developments. Ricarda Schlimbach's StudyBuddy -  Ricarda Schlimbach shone the spotlight on…
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Podium Royal’s’ Citizen Dialogue: AI – Fantastic Tool or Future Nightmare?

Podium Royal’s’ Citizen Dialogue: AI – Fantastic Tool or Future Nightmare?

Artificial Intelligence, Citizens science, Invited talk, Learning Analytics, Transfer Activity
A Reflective Look at 'Podium Royal's' Citizen Dialogue: AI - Fantastic Tool or Future Nightmare? On 5th September 2023, Heerlen's Royal Cinema had become more than just a movie house. It transformed into a dynamic platform for critical exchange, housing the latest 'Podium Royal.' This monthly meeting place had entertained a lively debate, scrutinizing AI's escalating prominence in our lives. The quaint interiors of the Royal Cinema echoed with the contemplations of concerned citizens. Artificial Intelligence or AI's omnipresence was the crux of the discussion. Visible in everyday activities, from supermarket self-scanners to self-driving cars, from online shopping algorithms to medical software detecting breast cancer – the omnipresence of AI was universally acknowledged. But this prevalence has also raised several unsettling thoughts - are we aligning with more totalitarian governments…
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Keynote: Teaching with AI?! School in the Era of ChatGPT and Chatbots

Keynote: Teaching with AI?! School in the Era of ChatGPT and Chatbots

Artificial Intelligence, Invited talk, Transfer Activity, Workshop
Last week, the University of Hildesheim hosted an enlightening keynote by Sebastian Wollny on the topic, "Unterricht mit KI?! Schule in Zeiten von ChatGPT und Chatbots" (Teaching with AI?! School in the Era of ChatGPT and Chatbots). This thought-provoking presentation unfolded a narrative that encompassed the history of chatbots, their profound influence on our daily lives, three pivotal areas for their application in education, and the evolving role of educators. The keynote was a pivotal event within the framework of the teacher training program, "Digitalisierung in der Unterrichtspraxis: Erprobte Konzepte und Tools für den Fachunterricht" (Digitalization in Teaching Practice: Tested Concepts and Tools for Subject Instruction). It brought together approximately 50 enthusiastic educators from across Lower Saxony, all eager to enhance their teaching through digital means. Aside from Sebastian Wollny's…
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Workshop: Hyperchalk – How to implement Self-hosted Whiteboard Tasks @ JTEL Summer School 2023

Workshop: Hyperchalk – How to implement Self-hosted Whiteboard Tasks @ JTEL Summer School 2023

Artificial Intelligence, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Learning Analytics, Summer School, Workshop
In this workshop which Lukas Menzel and I gave at the seventeenth JTEL Summer School, we explored the possibilities of our self-implemented whiteboard tool Hyperchalk. Hyperchalk is a backend for Excalidraw which allows for integrating learning management systems via LTI and collecting a complete history of trace data. After a short kick-off presentation, we let the participants design their own learning activities using the whiteboard. All participants created little tasks that other participants then solved. As most participants had a strong background in teaching, these were inspired by practical experiences. The tasks involved various topics, from stochastics to K12-level geography. At the end of the workshop, we taught the participants how to administrate the tool and how to set it up on their own servers. Overall, it was a successful…
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Workshop: Large Language Models for Feedback Generation @ JTEL Summer School 2023

Workshop: Large Language Models for Feedback Generation @ JTEL Summer School 2023

Artificial Intelligence, Feedback, Summer School, Workshop
At the seventeenth JTEL Summer School, Lukas Menzel and I had the pleasure of giving a workshop on the potentials and pitfalls of large language models for generating learner feedback. We kicked the event off with a general presentation on large language models. We explained the technical properties of well-known language models such as BERT or GPT. Following this, we went into different setups that can be used for feedback generation. On the one hand, this can involve training a BERT-based model to predict codes for input responses that trigger OnTask-style feedback rules. While this approach is stable regarding what feedback students receive, it is also inflexible, as such feedback cannot necessarily mirror all detailed intricacies that might occur in a student's response. For this reason, it can feel kind…
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Advancing Education with “AI in the Loop” Interfaces @ #JTELSS23

Advancing Education with “AI in the Loop” Interfaces @ #JTELSS23

Artificial Intelligence, Summer School, Workshop
From June 3rd to 10th, the city of La Manga in Spain hosted an exciting event, the Seventeenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (JTELSS 2023). Among the talented researchers organizing this renowned summer school for young TEL researchers in Europe, Sebastian Wollny contributed with a workshop focused on the speed design challenge. The challenge this year was to design an "AI in the Loop" interface specifically aimed at helping teachers analyze Exit Slips. These short reflection tasks, given at the end of a lesson, offer valuable insights into student comprehension and learning. However, teachers often struggle with limited time to thoroughly analyze these Exit Slips. Sebastian encouraged participants to place the human at the center of their design while incorporating artificial intelligence, embracing the concept of "AI in…
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New pub: Lernpfade in adaptiven und künstlich-intelligenten Lernprogramme

New pub: Lernpfade in adaptiven und künstlich-intelligenten Lernprogramme

Artificial Intelligence, Book chapter, Learning Analytics, Research Methods
In this newly published book chapter, the authors delve into the comparison between interactive, adaptive and artificially intelligent learning programs. While adaptive and AI-based applications offer promising potential, they face greater complexity in their development and have yet to fully establish themselves. To evaluate the prospects of these technologies, their respective capabilities are explored. Adaptive learning programs prove effective in skill acquisition, while AI-based solutions shine in cases where an explicit expertise model is challenging to articulate. The didactic and pedagogical challenges that lie ahead for AI-based learning applications are also highlight. By examining these factors, valuable insights are gained into the landscape of advanced learning technologies and their future implications. Reference: Kerres, M., Buntins, K., Buchner, J., Drachsler, H., & Zawacki-Richter, O.. (In Press). Lernpfade in adaptiven und künstlich-intelligenten…
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New research program: Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

New research program: Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Book, Computational Psychometrics, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Feedback, Further Education, Higher Education, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Research Methods, School
On May 12, 2023, the Highly Informative Learning Analytics (HILA) research program of the EduTec@DIPF, studiumdigitale@Goethe University Frankfurt and the Open Learning and Instruction group@Open Universiteit was presented by Hendrik Drachsler at the main campus of the Open University of the Netherlands. The release of the HILA research program marks a significant milestone for the collaboration in the field of learning analytics between of the Dutch-German research collective.  The HILA research program is focused on developing new tools and methods to collect, analyze, and interpret data that can help educational institutions to understand the learning process better. As part of the program's launch, a keynote by Ioana Jivet on student-facing learning analytics was provided. Ioana reported on two empirical studies investigating the effect of data-driven feedback on students. [pdf-embedder url="https://edutec.science/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023_05-Keynote-Symposium-Hendrik.pdf"…
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