This paper discusses the development and testing of a gamified mathematical learning app. Said app is designed for primary school children in their first two years of learning, so that they can practice the arithmetic operations addition and subtraction in a playful way. Predefined error categories are used to specifically eliminate weaknesses. As an incentive for the learners, mascots, stars and a child-oriented look are offered, as well as a mode in which the players can compete with others worldwide and, in the case of good performance, find themselves on the leaderboard. A test run and a subsequently conducted survey with 49 school children showed that the app generally works well and that the subjective perceptions regarding the motivational ability of the mascots correlate with the overall perception of the app.
Electronic learning, with all its different variations, approaches and applications, is a very relevant topic in today’s education. E-Learning is a wide field, as it affects classes in school as well as training scenarios for adult persons. This work describes the development of two E-Learning systems: EinMalEins Trainer and Division Trainer. Both applications are part of the learning lab of Graz University of Technology. This document sums up the theoretical background of the development process as well as the realization. A lot of emphasis in this work laid on applying different testing methods, therefore thinking aloud testing as well as automated testing are handled more deeply. The methodology behind these methods is explained and the results are presented.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) gewinnen immer mehr an Stellenwert in der Bildung. Eines der wichtigsten Techniken zur Vermittlung der Inhalte in einem MOOC ist das Video. Videos sind allerdings ein passives Medium und die Teilnehmer:innen verlieren schnell an Aufmerksamkeit. Eine Möglichkeit diesem Problem entgegenzuwirken, sind interaktive Elemente die in das Video eingebettet werden. Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags wird anhand von zwei MOOCs auf iMooX.at gezeigt, wie mit einer speziellen Videoplattform interaktive Elemente eingebettet werden können und welche Auswirkungen das auf die Aufmerksamkeit und den Lernerfolg der Teilnehmer:innen hat. Da es bei diesen MOOCs um die Grundlagen der Programmierung mit Python geht, wurden vor allem interaktive Programmieraufgaben in die Videos eingebettet. In einer ausführlichen Analyse konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Performance der Teilnehmer:innen durch den Einsatz dieser interaktiven Aufgaben gestiegen ist.
In the recent years, as technology grew, so did the chatbot technology. More and more companies and people are using and reaping the benefits from them. This paper shows how a chatbot for mathematical tasks, named mathbot, was developed. The chatbot uses mathematical exercises from the “Schulapps” of the LearningLab of Graz, University of Technology and combines them with textual questions to provide a useful utility for practicing. It is shown that such a chatbot could be useful for pupils and teachers by evaluating a test run in an elementary school.
Based on the currently developing trend of so called Massive Open Online Courses it is obvious that learning videos are more in use nowadays. This is some kind of comeback because due to the maxim “TV is easy, book is hard” [1][2] videos were used rarely for teaching. A further reason for this rare usage is that it is widely known that a key factor for human learning is a mechanism called selective attention [3][4]. This suggests that managing this attention is from high importance. Such a management could be achieved by providing different forms of interaction and communication in all directions. It has been shown that interaction and communication is crucial for the learning process [6]. Because of these remarks this research study introduces an algorithm which schedules interactions in learning videos and live broadcastings. The algorithm is implemented by a web application and it is based on the concept of a state machine. Finally, the evaluation of the algorithm points out that it is generally working after the improvement of some drawbacks regarding the distribution of interactions in the video.
There are many reasons for the implementation of authentication on learning platforms. For instance, it is required for the teachers to identify individual students if the learning platform offers some kind of assessment. In addition, authentication is the base for a successful monitoring of the attendance of the students. Compulsory attendance is often applied because many positive effects have been reported by authors of several studies. To monitor the attendance at online videos interactive components can be applied. Another benefit of such interactive components is that they help retain the attention of the students. This study was carried out to examine how the students used a video learning platform which provides interactive components of the videos as part of a course offered at Graz University of Technology. Up until now, a major drawback of this platform has been that the students have been required to register manually on the platform. Now, students are able to use the platform without manual registration and authentication, because these steps happen automatically via the main learning platform that provides all of the course materials. Furthermore, the course design and the application of the interactive components, presenting multiple-choice questions, are evaluated. It is pointed out that the concept improves the performance of the students and equips the teacher with valuable feedback regarding the students’ interests.
When developing learning applications the topic of LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) will arise. These tools enable linking different learning applications together. If python and django is used the onl available method to develop a LTI provider is the usage of the python LTI library. With the interfaces of this library the rest has to be implemented for each project.
This is the documentation of LIVE (short for Live Interaction in Virtual Learning Environments). It is a web-platform which enriches videos or live-broadcastings with different methods of interactivity. From a technical point of view LIVE is based on python, django and some other libraries.
Due to the fact that students are confronted with a growing amount of texts, colours, figures and shapes and due to their ability to process only a limited number of such information simultaneously, it seems to be obvious that efforts should be made to increase the students’ attention-levels. This is important because research results have indicated that selective attention is considered as the most valuable resource in the process of human learning. The application of interaction and communication to the process of learning is a useful strategy to direct the students’ attention. It seems to be obvious that this is also true for learning videos. Therefore, this work contains a description of how a video platform with interactive components can be used to support the students and teacher. The video platform is explained and evaluated by analysing its usage in a large teaching course at an institution of higher education. The application of this strategy improved the students’ performance and optimized the teacher’s workload.
When developing learning applications you will most likely have to write your own LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) provider for it. Such a provider enables your app to be embedded or called from an other learning platform (e.g. moodle) which is called LTI consumer.