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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New pub: Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration

New pub: Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration

Computer-supported collaborative learning, Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics
In the ever-changing landscape of education, innovation is the key to ensuring that every student has access to quality learning experiences. A transformative approach is Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), in which enables students to harness the power of teamwork to achieve learning outcomes that often exceed those they could reach individually. One of the strengths of CSCL is that it can give participant feedback on the quality of their collaborative work. This feedback not only aids individual growth but also enhances the group's overall dynamic. Traditionally, providing such feedback was a manual and time-intensive task, making it impractical for larger classes or scalable education programs. That's where this newly published paper comes into play. CSCL The paper “Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration: Evidence…
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Workshops and tutorials at LASI2023 in Singapore

Workshops and tutorials at LASI2023 in Singapore

Feedback, Learning Analytics, Summer School, Workshop
During 6-8 June 2023, Ioana Jivet participated in the first in-person Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) since 2019, hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS). The event included a keynote delivered by NUS President Prof. Tan Eng Chye on how NUS is supporting education with educational data, a keynote delivered by Prof. Rebecca Ferguson on the current challenges and opportunities of the field of learning analytics (LA), an expert panel discussing the role of LA in the age of AI and a series of tutorials and workshops conducted by various professionals in the field of LA. As part of the program, Ioana Jivet led a 5.5-hour workshop and a 2-hour tutorial focusing on effective dashboard design, data visualization, and sense-making. The workshop "Effective Dashboard Design and Data Visualization for…
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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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Keynote @ #JTELSS23 – Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Keynote @ #JTELSS23 – Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Summer School
Hendrik Drachsler delivered a keynote presentation at the 17th EATEL Summer School on Technology-Enhanced Learning (JTELSS 2023) in La Manga, Spain that unveiled groundbreaking insights from the Highly Informative and Learning Analytics (HILA) research program. This exciting initiative explores the effectiveness of HILA and the transformative power of data-enriched learning activities in providing highly informative feedback to students. Here a few highlights from Hendrik's keynote, showcasing the potential of HILA to revolutionize learning outcomes. The Power of Feedback Extensive research has long recognized the profound impact of feedback on learning success. Hendrik's presentation revealed that HILA surpasses traditional feedback methods by offering even higher efficacy. By going beyond simple right or wrong responses, HILA provides actionable feedback that enables students to exercise effective metacognitive control over their learning process. This…
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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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Dissemination event for the AFELK project

Dissemination event for the AFELK project

Event, Feedback, Project, Project meeting, Research topic, School, Target group
Digital lessons can help track individual student learning progression, analyze the extent to which they are productive and report this information back to teachers. But how can this individual learning progression and the learning difficulties that arise in the process be depicted? The research project AFLEK "Analyse und Förderung von Lernverläufen zur Entwicklung von Kompetenzen" (Analysis and Support of Learning Trajectories for the Development of Competencies) is currently looking for answers to this issue. The interdisciplinary project team uses so-called teacher dashboards to provide physics teachers with almost real-time feedback on the learning progress of their students. The information from digital teaching units helps identify productive and unproductive learning progression; this information can then help to automatically recolonize learning difficulties und derive feedback for the teachers to support more productive…
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HIKOF – Evaluation Study Completed

HIKOF – Evaluation Study Completed

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Feedback, Learning Analytics, Project
In HIKOF (highly informative feedback for digital learning) project, the evaluation study has been successfully completed, where feedback was provided for about 1000 students in a Teacher Education Course (from Psychology department). Students' feedback on the feedback that was given to them was also collected to determine how comprehensive our feedback was, if it motivated them, and was helpful for them, and enhanced their learning progress. Specifically, the evaluation study focuses on the use of machine learning for  the creation of personalized feedback that is both formative and summative. Data from a pilot study serves as a starting point for the evaluation to further optimize the AI technology for generating feedback. The evaluation study aims to investigate the effect of Highly Informative Automated Feedback (HIAF) on student performance and perception…
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HILA Keynote @ CEL annual meeting

HILA Keynote @ CEL annual meeting

Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Invited talk, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Transfer Activity
Hendrik Drachsler gave a keynote @ the LDE CEL Annual Meeting under the theme ‘Developing a Culture of Learning Analytics'. Hendrik summarized the achievements of the Highly Informative and Learning Analytics (HILA) research program, that is the successor of the Trusted Learning Analytics research program conducted in Frankfurt, Germany.  After two years of digital annual meetings, finally CEL could invite again to their annual meeting 2022 at the CEL Teaching Lab. Among keynotes from Simon Buckingham Shum (University of Technology Sydney), and Alyssa Friend Wise (New York University), Hendrik presented the latest research outcomes on Highly Informative and Learning Analytics (HILA) research program. Highly informative and competency-based feedback is costly and can be best given in small teacher-to-learner settings. According to research, feedback has a powerful effect on learning success;…
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Podcast “FutureSchool”: Child reporter talks with Scientist about Educational Technologies

Podcast “FutureSchool”: Child reporter talks with Scientist about Educational Technologies

Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Competence development, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Digitalisation, Event, Feedback, Invited talk, Promotion activity, Robots in Education, School, Transfer Activity
The German podcast "FutureSchool" looks at the classroom of the future and which technical aids for learning could be conceivable, but are also already being developed. Luis and DIPF education expert and our colleague Dana Kube consider together where technology is superior to teachers and when, in turn, teachers are unbeatable as real people with real experiences: https://blog.bildungsserver.de/klassenzimmer-der-zukunft/ The three-part podcast "FutureSchool" was created as part of the BMBF project "enorM - Lernen von (ÜBER)MORGEN". In the project, which is part of the "Science Year 2022 - Inquired about!", pupils and researchers have exchanged ideas in numerous formats, for example about new subjects and digital learning support.
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