towards context-specific personalised help in moodle

Towards Context-specific Personalised Help in Moodle

Michael O’Mahony - Clarity Centre, UCDMark Melia – Enovation Solutions

Context – Percolate Project

• e-Learning Industry working with academic researchers

• Industry defined challenging use cases• Challenge is to apply research to use case• Third level use case – helping students with

problemsIndustry Academia

The Problem

• Students working online needs help• Finding wood from trees difficult on WWW

• I need help with X now!– Understand subject – Pedagogically sound– Personalised to me

photo by London College of Fashion

The Problem

• NDLR (DSpace) Moodle search

• One size fits all • Celebrate individuality – Prior knowledge– Type of resources– Course context

Recommender system

• Hooks Moodle into a learning resource repository

• Search understands what peers found useful• Search understands the conceptual structure of

subject• Uses conceptual structure to understand

learners needs• Results organised according to a pedagogical

strategy

Software Testing

How does it work?

• Semantic search– Based on conceptual structure of subject area

• Social search – Based on whether “similar” learners found a

resource useful• Composition engine– Compose resources from search into learning

episode

• 18 DCU 4th year Mechanical Engineering students

• 6 week trial (complete)

• Students used application in the context of the following assignment:

User Trial

“You are a process engineer for a multi-internationalinstitution that wishes to introduce an advanced manufacturing technology for one of their new advanced material based products…”

DCU Trial

• 527 completed search sessions

• 419 results selected (130 distinct results)

• User feedback:

– 36 results rated or tagged

– 34 post-confidence scores for concepts

User Trial

DCU Trial

“Good system, still in its early stages” [Student A]

“A wider range of information needs to be uploaded in order for it to accomodate

the academic objectives of the materials module” [Student B]

Next Steps

• Percolate LTC• Better UI• Manual effort • Non-intrusive methods of gaining info

Questions?

Contact: mark.melia@enovation.ie

Acknowledgements:

Dr. Dermot Brabazon – DCUCatherine Bruen – NDLR

We kindly acknowledge Enterprise Ireland for their support for this project.

Contact: mark.melia@enovation.ie