Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

A Service Perspective on Designing Learning Companions as Bonding and Mindful Time Managers in Further Education

Further education students who work in parallel are particularly exposed to challenges such as overscheduling and exhaustion. Learning Companions (LCs) in their role as virtual relationship-oriented chatbots or voicebots in education might facilitate the burden of learning through valuable interactions. Our contribution derives design knowledge for LCs as mindful time managers from a service-oriented perspective along the three layers of the value in interaction (ViU) model. By synthesizing the findings of a systematic literature review and user needs from six qualitative interviews with the target group, we derive 24 design requirements and iteratively synthesize five design principles emerging from the evaluation of a low-fidelity prototype. On a meta-level, we intend to contextualize a value-driven, service-oriented perspective on the design of information systems such as LCs

Using an animated pedagogical agent to support motivation, reflected in task persistence, by delivering formative assessment at classroom level

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5510786*es

Personalised trails and learner profiling within e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on personalisation and personalised trails. We begin by introducing and defining the concepts of personalisation and personalised trails. Personalisation requires that a user profile be stored, and so we assess currently available standard profile schemas and discuss the requirements for a profile to support personalised learning. We then review techniques for providing personalisation and some systems that implement these techniques, and discuss some of the issues around evaluating personalisation systems. We look especially at the use of learning and cognitive styles to support personalised learning, and also consider personalisation in the field of mobile learning, which has a slightly different take on the subject, and in commercially available systems, where personalisation support is found to currently be only at quite a low level. We conclude with a summary of the lessons to be learned from our review of personalisation and personalised trails

Large Language Model-Driven Classroom Flipping: Empowering Student-Centric Peer Questioning with Flipped Interaction

Reciprocal questioning is essential for effective teaching and learning, fostering active engagement and deeper understanding through collaborative interactions, especially in large classrooms. Can large language model (LLM), such as OpenAI's GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) series, assist in this? This paper investigates a pedagogical approach of classroom flipping based on flipped interaction in LLMs. Flipped interaction involves using language models to prioritize generating questions instead of answers to prompts. We demonstrate how traditional classroom flipping techniques, including Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT), can be enhanced through flipped interaction techniques, creating student-centric questions for hybrid teaching. In particular, we propose a workflow to integrate prompt engineering with clicker and JiTT quizzes by a poll-prompt-quiz routine and a quiz-prompt-discuss routine to empower students to self-regulate their learning capacity and enable teachers to swiftly personalize training pathways. We develop an LLM-driven chatbot software that digitizes various elements of classroom flipping and facilitates the assessment of students using these routines to deliver peer-generated questions. We have applied our LLM-driven chatbot software for teaching both undergraduate and graduate students from 2020 to 2022, effectively useful for bridging the gap between teachers and students in remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic years. In particular, LLM-driven classroom flipping can be particularly beneficial in large class settings to optimize teaching pace and enable engaging classroom experiences.Comment: Submitte

Training Language Mediators and Interpreters through Embodied Cognition, Immersive Learning and Virtual Reality: Didactic, Organizational and Cost Benefits

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) for training purposes has expanded exponentially in the last decade. This paper specifically examines the use of VR in the training of language mediators and interpreters. By way of exemplification, the paper describes a training project at the University of Palermo, the “Coopera” project. The physically-cognitively immersive ‘learning by doing’ factor that characterizes a VR educational experience is particularly well-suited to skill- based activities. The paper explains how the immersive nature of VR and the notion of ‘embodied cognition’ is particularly suited to mediator/interpreter training by plausibly reproducing daily life situations and providing a ‘risk- free’ environment in which students can safely practice (and make mistakes) without causing harm to themselves and others, and also to contain the high costs of mediator/interpreter training. We hope the Coopera project will help foster further research into new technologies in immersive language-mediation pedagogy