ALoE: Online Learning with Erroneous Examples
Erroneous examples in the ActiveMath TEL system are solutions including one or more errors that the student is asked to detect and to correct. Our hypothesis is that erroneous examples will give students the opportunity to find and reflect upon errors in a way that will lead to deeper, more robust learning, while at the same time not causing students to feel ashamed or demotivated, as is more likely when their own errors are exposed.
Our goal in ALoE is to help students learn mathematics by presenting erroneous examples together with exercises in a way that is adapted to the student and his/her context. We strive to improve students' cognitive competencies in math learning, as well as their meta-cognitive competencies in error discovery and self-monitoring. If students require help in detecting and correcting errors, ActiveMath will provide it.
Through empirical studies ALoE will not only try to understand when and how learners benefit from the study of erroneous examples and test the benefits of erroneous examples. It will also use that knowledge to extend ActiveMath to present erroneous examples adapted to the learner's needs, i.e. it will also employ — for the first time — the potential of technology-enhanced learning to make the examples beneficial for more students through tailored problem selection, frequency, help, and interaction type.
AMor
AMor (Adaptive Mathematik online Saar) is a project for developing ActiveMath content that shall help bridging the gap between what students know when they begin their studies and what really is expected from them in their courses at the university. The project focusses on chemistry and physics and therefore enforces collaboration of the three faculties chemistry, physics and computer science. The project is funded by the Saarland University and its duration is two years.
Intergeo project page
The main objective of Intergeo is to make digital content for mathematics teaching in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.
- offer content in a searchable and metadata-tagged portal.
- enable users to use their software of choice by specifying a common file format based on open standards.
- test available material in the classroom. All stakeholders, software teams, resource authors, teachers and learners will be involved, in order to promote quality enhancement cycles.
Within Intergeo, DFKI leads the community platforms' and curriculum encoding work-packages.
LASAD
LASAD project page
The LASAD project ("Learning to Argue: Generalized Support Across Domains”) aims at creating a generalized framework and methodology for the construction of argumentation support systems to help students learn argumentation in different domains. The realization of this goal will involve the research of a reusable ontology of argumentation learning objects, a large set of visual, analytic, and pedagogic components that can be combined in different fashions to create different domain-specific argumentation tutoring systems, and the research of an interoperable software system architecture, not specific to a particular domain, that allows the flexible integration of the different researched methods and components.In cooperation with SaarLernNetz, we develop an e-portfolio solution for maintaining and showcasing competencies. Additional components for matching personal competencies with job profile competencies will be devised and offered to customers of the SelbstLernZentrum Saar.
MatheBrücke
Finished project (co-operation is still going on). To prepare students for their studies the HTW (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft) des Saarlandes offers so-called "Brückenkurse". This courses aim at teaching the students everything they need to get an optimal start of their studies. Goal of this project is the integration of parts of the HTW Brückenkurse content into the ActiveMath eLearning platform to provide students with another way to learn, prepare and rehearse what is taught during the courses.
ATuF
Finished project (system is still in use at Saarland University). AtuF combines empirical psychological and AI research in order to develop a psychologically sound exercise system that provides most useful feedback and adapts it to the learner s competency and motivation. The theoretical basis for the feedback generation is Narciss ITF framework. As a case in point we shall work with the fraction domain.
AtuF will extend the web-based learning environment for mathematics, ActiveMath, with a psychologically sound student model and with adaptation of feedback in exercises. The results of AtuF include psychologically justified techniques for the generation and multidimensional adaptation of tutorial feedback in interactive exercises derived from Narciss framework for informative tutorial feedback as well as from new empirical results.
E-Cel
Finished project. The project is about the installation of an e-Chalk system ("Electronic Chalk") at Saarland University, as well as it's integration with the intelligent adaptive e-Learning system ActiveMath and the learning management system Clix Campus. Both mathematical (algebraic geometry) and medical (peadiatrics) content will be encoded.
Finished project. LeActiveMath is a specific targeted research project (STREP) funded under the
6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. It received the best rating of all e-learning projects in the first call of FP6. The project runs from January 2004 till December 2006 and includes 9 partners. The consortium is led by DFKI.
Mixed Initiative Proof Planning and its Application
Finished project. Mippa is a research project funded by the DFG.
Finished project. Funded by BMBF in its programme "New Media in Education"
Finished project. The aim of the MMiSS project, which is supported by BMBF in its programme "New Media in Education", is to set up a multimedia Internet-based adaptive educational system, covering the whole subject of Safe Systems. The project includes 5 partners and is led by the University of Bremen.
Finished project. Mowgli is a research project funded under the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The project includes 6 partners and the consortium is led by University of Bologna (Italy), Department of Computer Science.
Finished project. Matheführerschein at Fachhochschule Dortmund. Try our local demo at http://mafue.activemath.org.
This project was funded by Arbeitgeberverband Gesamtmetall.
Finished project. Chemistry students, like students in physics, mathematics, and other technical disciplines, often learn to solve problems algorithmically, applying well-practiced procedures to textbook problems. But often these students do not understand the underlying conceptual aspects of the problems they solve algorithmically.
An important setting for promoting conceptual understanding in chemistry is the laboratory, where students must apply not only pre-defined problem solving procedures, but must also plan experiments, hypothesize outcomes, conduct and monitor experiments, and evaluate outcomes. In the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC) Chemistry LearnLab, the Virtual Laboratory (VLab) is the online software environment used to simulate a real chemistry laboratory and assist students in their conceptual understanding of chemistry. However, the VLab on its own is not enough.
In this project, we will further assist chemistry students in their conceptual learning, first, through having pairs of students collaborate on problems, assisted by computer-mediated collaboration scripts that extend the VLab and, later, through dynamic adaptation of those collaboration scripts. In this one-year project, we will analyze current use of the VLab, design and implement a computer-mediated collaborative environment around the VLab, using a collaborative software tool called Cool Modes, and execute a lab study to evaluate the effectiveness of this tool. The one-year project will provide the foundation for an longer term project in which we will perform full-scale classroom studies to test the hypotheses that
- collaboration, supported by collaboration scripts, can promote the creation and strengthening of conceptual chemistry knowledge and
- that dynamic adaptation of the collaboration scripts can further improve that learning.
Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence
Finished project. Initiative on distributed log repositions
The project runs from January 2004 until June 2008 and includes over 20 partners. The consortium is led by Siemens Business Services.
ActiveMath-EU project page
Finished project. ActiveMath-EU shall develop essential services, a community, and relations to networks to widely disseminate and exploit results of the highly successful FP6 project LeActiveMath.
Since the analysis of LeActiveMath' exploitation potential by Klett-Verlag has shown that an open-source distribution is a key exploitation measure, the services to be developed by ActiveMath-EU include: user mailing list, uploading facilities, integration into open-source LMS, integration into portals, manual for users, web-site with wiki, etc. The European dimension will be strengthened by making ActiveMath available in more languages and for a larger geographical coverage, by disseminating to European networks, and by including representatives of new countries in the user community and in the consortium. The open-source community does not stop at countryboarders anyway.
Finished project. An important trend in learning is collaboration. However, collaboration does not occur naturally; it typically requires some support. In the Argunaut project, we are using machine learning and data mining techniques to help a moderator support computer-based argumentation between students. The project started December 2005 and will run for 33 months. It is funded by the European Commission.