towards context-specific personalised help in moodle
DESCRIPTION
This presentation outlines work done by Enovation and research partners in the Percolate project to investigate allowing for personalised JIT help in Moodle.TRANSCRIPT
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: [email protected]
Acknowledgements:
Dr. Dermot Brabazon – DCUCatherine Bruen – NDLR
We kindly acknowledge Enterprise Ireland for their support for this project.
Contact: [email protected]