Know Center News

Know-Center researchers at the 15th European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning

Three researchers of Know-Center took part in this year’s EC-TEL (the 15th European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning), the premier venue for technology-enhanced learning in Europe. Sebastian Dennerlein (poster & demo co-chair) and the rest of the organisational team set new standards for online interactivity and collaboration. The event was organised completely online, still incorporating all presentations, workshops and social events of a full conference with researchers from all over the world. Irmtraud Wolfbauer, a Know-Center PhD student, and Viktoria Pammer-Schindler, her supervisor, contributed to the community of TEL researchers with new research and active involvement.

Together with Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez (poster & demo co-chair EC-TEL; Trinity College Dublin) and Thiemo Leonhardt (poster & demo chair DELFI; TU Dresden), Sebastian re-designed the offline poster & demo track format for online conferences. Posters and demos were topically clustered in small groups and presented with an ePoster&Demo tool called “learning toolbox” (https://my.ltb.io/#/showcase/ec-tel – click red tags for clusters) to keep the interactive nature of the traditional discursive approach alive. Each author sequentially presented her or his ePoster & Demo via video-conferencing, only taking comprehensions questions, and afterwards engaged in a shared discussion of the cluster and its contributions to the conference theme. To raise attention to the clusters being scattered over the conference program, pitch videos were sent out in advance introducing the authors, their contribution and their relation to the conference theme in short.

EC-TEL Poster & Demo Online Approach

Two publications of the ePoster and Demo track were co-authored by Viktoria Pammer-Schindler and Sebastian Dennerlein. Sebastian and Viktoria initiated a framework for the design of ethical responsible Artificial Intelligence systems (https://api.ltb.io/show/BARIT), with Christoph Brenner, Stefan Schweiger & Robert Gutounig which takes a holistic perspective and continuously respects ethical principles alongside the design process: Socio-technical Reflection of Ethical Principles – SREP Framework. SREP assumes that socio-technical systems are evolving in iterations and that reflection on socio-technical interactions can be leveraged for exploring ethical issues over time. Moreover, both contributed to the development of a framework for the design of learning analytics solutions for measuring learning progress and serving immediate feedback needs (https://api.ltb.io/show/BXTPX).

 

SREP Model

The doctoral consortium at ECTEL brings together young researchers and experts in the field of technology-enhanced learning. Phd students get the opportunity to discuss their PhD projects with top researchers and to get involved in the TEL community. Irmtraud Wolfbauer presented her work on „Designing Rebo, the Reflection Guidance Chatbot – In the Context of Digitalising Apprenticeship Training” with great success. In a project funded by the WKO, digitisation is introduced into the training of Styrian apprentices, incorporating an online learning platform and practical learning tasks that bridge education and communication between training in the apprentices’ companies and an extra training workshop. Additionally, a reflective learning intervention is implemented in the form of Rebo, the reflection guidance chatbot.

The exciting topic of conversational agents for learning through reflective discussions was further explored by Irmtraud Wolfbauer’s presentation of the paper “Rebo Junior: Analysis of Dialogue Structure Quality for a Reflection Guidance Chatbot” (authors: Irmtraud Wolfbauer, Viktoria Pammer-Schindler, Carolyn P. Rose). The dialogue structure Rebo Junior was tested in multiple field studies and proved successful in leading apprentices in reflection on practical learning tasks.

 

Paper presentation Irmtraud Wolfbauer.png (copyright Viktoria Pammer-Schindler)