Wednesday, 18 September 2013

IWEPLET is over

From 16.-17.September, the EuroPLOT project organised the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus), in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference.

The workshop was divided into two parts: on the first day the focus was on the EuroPLOT project itself, with individual presentations of the work package leaders. The workshop was opened by Janet Finlay who gave an account about how the EuroPLOT project was established in 2009/2010 and how the team came together in preparing the proposal to the EACEA. It was then followed by presentations given by members of the EuroPLOT team. The talks covered the theoretical foundations, the tool development, the implementation of persuasive design in four case studies, and the evaluation of the results. A discussion with an outlook followed. Unfortunately BJ Fogg was not able to appear online as originally scheduled.

The second day was devoted to papers which showed work with scope beyond EuroPLOT. Presenters came from as far as Canada and Ghana. There were 11 papers presented, covering Persuasive Design, Assessment and Learning Success, Technologies, and Application Domains.

The proceedings are available online: on the website http://www.iweplet2013.eu/program are links to the whole proceedings volume, as well as to individual papers.

Monday, 2 September 2013

Join us for the final test of PLOTLearner 3

PLOTLearner is now available online with a learning journey and repurposed Hebrew language learning! 
 
Follow the latest news on PLOTLearner at http://bh.3bmoodle.dk/During September EuroPLOT offers access to an online repurposed version of PLOTLearner for evaluation. To get a login account you will be obliged to complete the post-test online survey for EuroPLOT on Friday noon September 27 at the very latest! 

The new online version is called Bible Online Learner. After login, learners will have access to statistics on their progress in their Learning Journey Online and they will learn in a new reusable course developed in PLOTMaker.  

You can watch this exciting new development in a short video - it takes only 8 minutes and 24 seconds: Watch video on new Hebrew Online Learning from the Hebrew Bible from EuroPLOT. (=http://bh.3bmoodle.dk/pluginfile.php/1115/mod_resource/content/1/Bible%20Oline%20Learner%20Journey%20and%20Course.mp4 )

CURRENT WORK 

As of September 1, we are releasing the all but version on PLOTLearner 3 for deployment and evaluation at the University of Copenhagen and for use by other interested test persons. We now have an online login access which will continue to be available after the end of EuroPLOT in October. 

The German Bible Society in Stuttgart will in collaboration with Nicolai Winther-Nielsen and 3BM offer a license to use the full Hebrew Bible database which is under continued development at the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) at the Vrije Universiteit under the direction of Professor Wido T. van Peursen. We expect that access to this new database will be available on terms which promote affordable global learning in Asia and Africa for the PC as well as on the internet.  

EuroPLOT programmer Claus Tøndering has worked without funding for the last year and developed the Bible Online Learner http://bibleol.3bmoodle.dk/  which is accessible online for smart phones and tablets. We offer login access for individuals as well as for classes in collaboration with fellow Hebrew teachers and institutions. We want to assist colleagues in repurposing this system to their own teaching in any way they may wish.

THREE AALOBORG STUDENTS 

Claus Tøndering and Nicolai Winther-Nielsen are collaborating with a team of students who are currently working on projects on persuasive learning in their studies of Information Architecture and Human Computer Interaction at Aalborg University.

The first Aalborg University student: Judith Gottschalk has now under the supervision of Claus Tøndering and Nicolai Winther-Nielsen developed proficiency statistics for the Learning Journey Online. The scores of the learners reflect how many right answers a student has in exercises per minute, but it reduces this score by a calculation of the average of mistakes. 

Nicolai Winther-Nielsen has planned this module through test data from 78 students involved in tests carried out in collaboration with EuroPLOT’s Associate Partner in Madagascar, the Lutheran Graduate School of Theology (SALT), and funded by Danmission

In her next project, Judith Gottschalk will work on adding user levels and graphical display of the learning journeys. We are also now heading towards a more sophisticated recommender system which can guide students individually through automated learning proposals.

The second Aalborg University student: Christian Højgaard Jensen has over the past three months developed a new course which repurposes the 12 sessions developed by Nicolai Winther-Nielsen for EuroPLOT and tested in a class at Fjellhaug International University College Denmark. 

He was the top student in the group testing PLOTLearner 2 in the Autumn of 2012, and is now using EuroPLOTs PLOTMaker to develop a new 12 session course which integrates the repeated testing approach developed by EuroPLOT’s Associate Partner, Nava Bergman, Gothenburg University. 

The second Aalborg University student: Mikael Grønhøj Skovgård is currently researching gamification for his Master thesis and will graduate in the Autumn of 2013. The team wish to research principles from game design to enhance the persuasive force of the learning system

FUTURE PLANS 

At present all future plans depend on the engagement by a team of unfunded collaborators who will continue to work on open source development. 

Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Fjellhaug International University College Denmark is planning to develop online Learning Objects for the Bible Online Learner in a new project. Researcher Oliver Glanz of the Vrije Universiteit is also exploring collaboration on development for a new kind of exgesis. 

We will present our plans and new ideas at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Baltimore in November 23, 2013. Researchers involved in biblicalhumanities.org will invite fellow researchers to a consultation in Baltimore on November 22.

Through the software company 3BM, the team hopes eventually to be able to generate some funding from sale of licenses and courses. We also continue to seek funding and collaboration in new projects.

Do not hesitate to contact the leader of the team Nicolai Winther-Nielsen for permission to try out the new persuasive learning environment or to seek partnership for reuse and repurposing of the new open source resources developed by EuroPLOT's workpackage 5.