Critical perspectives on writing analytics

Writing Analytics focuses on the measurement and analysis of written texts for the purpose of understanding writing processes and products, in their educational contexts, and improving the teaching and learning of writing. This workshop adopts a critical, holistic perspective in which the definition of "the system" and "success" is not restricted to IR metrics such as precision and recall, but recognizes the many wider issues that aid or obstruct analytics adoption in educational settings, such as theoretical and pedagogical grounding, usability, user experience, stakeholder design engagement, practitioner development, organizational infrastructure, policy and ethics

Chapter 38 Learning Analytics

In this chapter, we present an overview of the field by articulating definitions and existing models of learning analytics. Case examples of learning analytics from Asian researchers are then summarized and reported. This is followed by an exploration of the key tensions in this field. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential areas for future research in this area

Enabling Teachers to Develop Pedagogically Sound and Technically Executable Learning Designs

Miao, Y., Van der Klink, M., Boon, J., Sloep, P. B., & Koper, R. (2009). Enabling Teachers to Develop Pedagogically Sound and Technically Executable Learning Designs [Special issue: Learning Design]. Distance Education, 30(2), 259-276.A learning design is a description of a sequence of learning activities that learners undertake to attain some learning objectives, including the resources and services needed to complete the activities. Unfortunately, there exists not a learning design language which can be used by teachers to explicitly describe pedagogical strategies and then can be interpreted by machine. This paper proposes to support teachers’ design processes by providing pedagogy-specific modeling languages for learning design. Based on activity theory, we developed a conceptual framework, which can be used to specify pedagogical semantics and operational semantics of notations of a pedagogy-specific modeling language. We present our approach by using peer assessment as an exemplary pedagogy. Through investigating whether practitioners can describe and understand peer assessment designs and whether the peer assessment designs can be interpreted by machine, we conclude that enriching pedagogical semantics and operational semantics of notations is a promising approach to develop a new generation of learning design languages, which enable teachers to develop pedagogically sound and technically executable learning designs.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org

An inquiry-based learning approach to teaching information retrieval

The study of information retrieval (IR) has increased in interest and importance with the explosive growth of online information in recent years. Learning about IR within formal courses of study enables users of search engines to use them more knowledgeably and effectively, while providing the starting point for the explorations of new researchers into novel search technologies. Although IR can be taught in a traditional manner of formal classroom instruction with students being led through the details of the subject and expected to reproduce this in assessment, the nature of IR as a topic makes it an ideal subject for inquiry-based learning approaches to teaching. In an inquiry-based learning approach students are introduced to the principles of a subject and then encouraged to develop their understanding by solving structured or open problems. Working through solutions in subsequent class discussions enables students to appreciate the availability of alternative solutions as proposed by their classmates. Following this approach students not only learn the details of IR techniques, but significantly, naturally learn to apply them in solution of problems. In doing this they not only gain an appreciation of alternative solutions to a problem, but also how to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses. Developing confidence and skills in problem solving enables student assessment to be structured around solution of problems. Thus students can be assessed on the basis of their understanding and ability to apply techniques, rather simply their skill at reciting facts. This has the additional benefit of encouraging general problem solving skills which can be of benefit in other subjects. This approach to teaching IR was successfully implemented in an undergraduate module where students were assessed in a written examination exploring their knowledge and understanding of the principles of IR and their ability to apply them to solving problems, and a written assignment based on developing an individual research proposal

Power to the Teachers:An Exploratory Review on Artificial Intelligence in Education

This exploratory review attempted to gather evidence from the literature by shedding light on the emerging phenomenon of conceptualising the impact of artificial intelligence in education. The review utilised the PRISMA framework to review the analysis and synthesis process encompassing the search, screening, coding, and data analysis strategy of 141 items included in the corpus. Key findings extracted from the review incorporate a taxonomy of artificial intelligence applications with associated teaching and learning practice and a framework for helping teachers to develop and self-reflect on the skills and capabilities envisioned for employing artificial intelligence in education. Implications for ethical use and a set of propositions for enacting teaching and learning using artificial intelligence are demarcated. The findings of this review contribute to developing a better understanding of how artificial intelligence may enhance teachers’ roles as catalysts in designing, visualising, and orchestrating AI-enabled teaching and learning, and this will, in turn, help to proliferate AI-systems that render computational representations based on meaningful data-driven inferences of the pedagogy, domain, and learner models

Enabling Teachers to Develop Pedagogically Sound and Technically Executable Learning Designs

A learning design is a description of a sequence of learning activities that learners undertake to attain some learning objectives, including the resources and services needed to complete the activities. Unfortunately, there exists not a learning design language which can be used by teachers to explicitly describe pedagogical strategies and then can be interpreted by machine. This paper proposes to support teachers’ design processes by providing pedagogy-specific modeling languages for learning design. Based on activity theory, we developed a conceptual framework, which can be used to specify pedagogical semantics and operational semantics of notations of a pedagogy-specific modeling language. We present our approach by using peer assessment as an exemplary pedagogy. Through investigating whether practitioners can describe and understand peer assessment designs and whether the peer assessment designs can be interpreted by machine, we conclude that enriching pedagogical semantics and operational semantics of notations is a promising approach to develop a new generation of learning design languages, which enable teachers to develop pedagogically sound and technically executable learning designs

Development of a learning pilot for the remote teaching of Smart Maintenance using open source tools

[EN] Technology has created a vast array of educational tools readily available to educators, but it also has created a shift in the skills and competences demanded from new graduates. As data science and machine learning are becoming commonplace across all industries, computer programming is emerging as one of the fundamental skills engineers will require to navigate the future and current workplace. It is, thus, the responsibility of educational institutions to rise to this challenge and to provide students with an appropriate training that facilitates the development of these skills. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of open source tools to introduce students to the more practical side of Smart Maintenance. By developing a learning pilot based mainly on computational notebooks, students without a programming background are walked through the relevant techniques and algorithms in an experiential format. The pilot highlights the superiority of Colab notebooks for the remote teaching of subjects that deal with data science and programming. The resulting insights from the experience will be used for the development of subsequent iterations during the current year.This project has received funding from the European Union’s “Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education” programme under grant agreement No 2019-1949 / 001-001 (correspondent to the project shortly entitled “NePRev”, “NExt Production REVolution”).Callupe, M.; Fumagalli, L.; Nucera, DD. (2021). Development of a learning pilot for the remote teaching of Smart Maintenance using open source tools. En 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1419-1427. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd21.2021.13140OCS1419142

Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning: Untangling the Evidence

Technology-enhanced personalised learning is not yet common in Germany, which is why we have tasked scientists with summarising the current status of international research on the matter. This study demonstrates the great potential of technology in implementing effective personalised learning. Nevertheless, it has not been assessed yet whether the practical implementation actually works: Even in countries such as the U.S., which lead the way in using techology in classroom settings, hardly any evaluation studies have been done to prove the effectiveness of technology-enhanced personalised learning. In the light of the above, the authors make recommendations for actions to be taken in Germany to make best use of the potential of technology in providing individual support and guidance to students