Novice programmers often struggle to build intuitions for abstract programming concepts. Analogies are a well-known way to make such concepts more accessible, but crafting analogies that are both effective and visually supported takes considerable effort on the instructor's side. This poster presents a tool that uses multiple vision-language models (VLMs) to generate multimodal analogies for programming concepts, which combine textual explanations with generated images. The tool allows students to compare analogies produced by different models side by side and optionally provide feedback on them. This creates an environment in which students can explore and compare AI-generated analogies. It also opens opportunities for future research on multimodal explanations in computing education.

Despite the growing demand for programming skills, introductory computer science courses (CS1) remain a significant hurdle for many students, often leading to high dropout rates. The considerable number of new concepts can be challenging for beginners, leading to misunderstandings and frustration within the learning process. Addressing the factors contributing to student dropout in CS1 is essential to improve retention rates. Therefore, this study analyzed the behavior of 747 students enrolled in a CS1 course at the University of Sydney during the second semester of 2023. Data from the university's learning management system (LMS), combined with student submission scores and demographic information, was used to identify early warning signs of dropouts and differentiate between successful and unsuccessful students. Students were grouped into three categories: i) non-completers (less than 50% at the final grade), ii) low completers ($<75 \%$), and iii) high completers ($>75 \%$). Five machine learning models were trained to identify the most important features contributing to course success. Our work illustrates that non-completers show distinct behavior from the start, particularly in lab performance, where they consistently underperformed compared to other groups. While dropout predictions can be made with an accuracy of 80% as early as week 2, later semester activities and assessments have a greater impact on final grades. Engagement in lab units proved to be crucial for student success, with non-completers exhibiting performance differences early on. These results underscore the importance of monitoring lab engagement to identify students at risk of dropping out and suggest that early intervention within the course framework could help mitigate attrition rates.

Large Language Models represent a significant breakthrough in Natural Language Processing research and opened a wide range of application domains. This paper demonstrates the successful integration of Large Language Models into immersive learning environments. The review highlights how this emerging technology aligns with pedagogical principles, enhancing the effectiveness of current educational systems. It also reflects recent advancements in integrating Large Language Models, including fine-tuning, hallucination reduction, fact-checking, and human evaluation of generated results.

Abstract Web search is a crucial technology for the digital economy. Dominated by a few gatekeepers focused on commercial success, however, web publishers have to optimize their content for these gatekeepers, resulting in a closed ecosystem of search engines as well as the risk of publishers sacrificing quality. To encourage an open search ecosystem and offer users genuine choice among alternative search engines, we propose the development of an Open Web Index (OWI). We outline six core principles for developing and maintaining an open index, based on open data principles, legal compliance, and collaborative technology development. The combination of an open index with what we call declarative search engines will facilitate the development of vertical search engines and innovative web data products (including, e.g., large language models), enabling a fair and open information space. This framework underpins the EU‐funded project OpenWebSearch.EU, marking the first step towards realizing an Open Web Index.

Augmented reality (AR) has great potential for use in healthcare applications, especially remote medical training and supervision. In this paper, we analyze the usage of an AR communication system to teach a medical procedure, the placement of a central venous catheter (CVC) under ultrasound guidance. We examine various AR communication and collaboration components, including gestural communication, volumetric information, annotations, augmented objects, and augmented screens. We compare how teaching in AR differs from teaching through videoconferencing-based communication. Our results include a detailed medical training steps analysis in which we compare how verbal and visual communication differs between video and AR training. We identify procedural steps in which medical experts give visual instructions utilizing AR components. We examine the change in AR usage and interaction over time and recognize patterns between users. Moreover, AR design recommendations are given based on post-training interviews.

pen data and open science are terms that are becoming ever more popular. The information generated in large organizations is of great potential for organizations, future research, innovation, and more. Currently, there is a wide range of similar guidelines for publishing organizational data, focusing on data anonymization containing conflicting ideas and steps. These guidelines usually do not focus on the whole process of assessing risks, evaluating, and distributing data. In this paper, the relevant tasks from different open data frameworks have been identified, adapted, and synthesized into a six-step framework to transform organizational data into open data while offering privacy protection to organisational users. As part of the research, the framework was applied to a CERN dataset and expert interviews were conducted to evaluate the results and the framework. Drawbacks of the frameworks were identified and suggested as improvements for future work.

We present our work in progress, a real-time mixed reality communication system for remote assistance in medical emergency situations. 3D cameras capture the emergency situa-tion and send volumetric data to a remote expert. The remote expert sees the volumetric scene through mixed reality glasses and guides an operator at the patient. The local operator receives audio and visual guidance augmented onto the mixed reality headset. We compare the mixed reality system against traditional video communication in a user study on a CPR emergency simulation. We evaluate task performance, cognitive load, and user interaction. The results will help to better understand the benefits of using augmented and volumetric information in medical emergency procedures.

Serious games have an already well-known positive impact on students’ motivation and their learning experience. In computer science education a majority of games and approaches exist, that provide engaging environments for students. On the one hand, these can be games related to learning algorithmic thinking but on the other hand, games to learn coding. Besides single-player games, there are also multiplayer games where players compete against each other or collaboratively work on programming tasks. However, many existing multiplayer games offer pre-defined levels where teachers have limited flexibility and individuality for their students. Additionally, many existing game environments use competitive over collaborative approaches. In our project, we extended an existing game by a multiplayer mode where players work together on coding tasks. The game elements support many coding-related concepts but also computational skills such as sequencing, conditionals, loops, and also advanced topics such as concurrency or dependencies using meaningful levels and tasks. However, we conducted an evaluation including 41 participants in three workshops: two in-class activities with secondary school students and an online activity with computer science students. Within these workshops, the students collaboratively worked on coding tasks within the game environment. Thereby, we observed the communication between the students while working on the tasks. Additionally, we evaluated the students’ attitudes towards collaborative learning. We found out that the in-game chat is barely used while in-class activities, especially when the tasks require only low coordination between players. We also found out, that students learn from each other and are more motivated when working together. With our approach, we want to provide educators with a flexible game environment where students can collaboratively improve their coding skills while solving engaging tasks.

Medical procedures are an essential part of healthcare delivery, and the acquisition of procedural skills is a critical component of medical education. Unfortunately, procedural skill is not evenly distributed among medical providers. Skills may vary within departments or institutions, and across geographic regions, depending on the provider’s training and ongoing experience. We present a mixed reality real-time communication system to increase access to procedural skill training and to improve remote emergency assistance. Our system allows a remote expert to guide a local operator through a medical procedure. RGBD cameras capture a volumetric view of the local scene including the patient, the operator, and the medical equipment. The volumetric capture is augmented onto the remote expert’s view to allow the expert to spatially guide the local operator using visual and verbal instructions. We evaluated our mixed reality communication system in a study in which experts teach the ultrasound-guided placement of a central venous catheter (CVC) to students in a simulation setting. The study compares state-of-the-art video communication against our system. The results indicate that our system enhances and offers new possibilities for visual communication compared to video teleconference-based training.

Teaching abstract topics, such as concepts in Modern Physics, has been known to be challenging due to the unattainable nature of some real world experiences. Hence, creating a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) offers a promising solution in bringing the learner closer to the experiences by simulating such an environment and immersing the user. In this work, we investigated the learning outcome of teaching the concept of Gravity Assist in a VLE. Gravity Assist, also known as the Gravitational Slingshot or Swing-By, is a method to accelerate or decelerate space probes by conducting an exchange of momentum with a planet. As this is one of the numerous topics in Modern Physics which require abstract multidimensional thinking, our research question was to assess the performance of a VLE on this particular field, since virtual reality offers depth impression, interactivity and immersion - parameters observed and discussed in this study. Conducting a user study where thirty participants - primarily students - were tested on their prior knowledge in a pre-questionnaire as well as their gained knowledge and their level of immersion in a post-questionnaire, we found that our VLE provides excellent results in teaching this topic; In average an improvement of 42.7% for Learning Evaluation Questions.

The interdisciplinary field of immersive learning research is scattered. Combining efforts for better exploration of this field from the different disciplines requires researchers to communicate and coordinate effectively. We call upon the community of immersive learning researchers for planting the Knowledge Tree of Immersive Learning Research, a proposal for a systematization effort for this field, combining both scholarly and practical knowledge, cultivating a robust and ever-growing knowledge base and methodological toolbox for immersive learning. This endeavor aims at promoting evidence-informed practice and guiding future research in the field. This paper contributes with the rationale for three objectives: 1) Developing common scientific terminology amidst the community of researchers; 2) Cultivating a common understanding of methodology, and 3) Advancing common use of theoretical approaches, frameworks, and models.

Questionnaires are important instruments to gather information from people in a wide range of application scenarios, such as analyzing the responses for evaluations, collecting preferences, or retrieving self-estimations in learning settings. However, based on the setting and design of a questionnaire participating can be boring or frustrating and consequently have a negative impact on results or disengage users. Literature reports negative findings in immersive simulations and learning games, where assessment and questionnaires are provided outside the learning experience. In this paper, we introduce an approach to integrate questionnaires into a game environment. Thereby, we want to provide learners with an engaging way to answer questions. To encourage them in participating, they receive rewards for completing questions. We performed two evaluations, an A/B study with 22 participants and an evaluation with 14 experts in subject-related fields. We could show that learners are more engaged in the in-game questionnaire and integrated questions make them more likely to respond. We could also identify strategies to obtain more reliable responses such as asking questions right after a task or including gamification elements. Findings can contribute to design more engaging applications or learning environments where evaluation and feedback have significance for both educators and learners.

In real life, people communicate using both speech and non-verbal signals such as gestures, face expression or body pose. Non-verbal signals impact the meaning of the spoken utterance in an abundance of ways. An absence of non-verbal signals impoverishes the process of communication. Yet, when users are represented as avatars, it is difficult to translate non-verbal signals along with the speech into the virtual world without specialized motion-capture hardware. In this paper, we propose a novel, data-driven technique for generating gestures directly from speech. Our approach is based on the application of Generative Adversarial Neural Networks (GANs) to model the correlation rather than causation between speech and gestures. This approach approximates neuroscience findings on how non-verbal communication and speech are correlated. We create a large dataset which consists of speech and corresponding gestures in a 3D human pose format from which our model learns the speaker-specific correlation. We evaluate the proposed technique in a user study that is inspired by the Turing test. For the study, we animate the generated gestures on a virtual character. We find that users are not able to distinguish between the generated and the recorded gestures. Moreover, users are able to identify our synthesized gestures as related or not related to a given utterance.

The proposed project, sCool, is an adaptive mobile game designed for STEM education. In this work, we present a new iteration of sCool in efforts to further examine contributing factors of engagement and comprehension. The new developed game experience for acquiring object-oriented programming skills is divided into two parts: concept-learning and practical. In the concept-learning part, the users explore a virtual environment filled with puzzle-pieces hinting theoretical concepts, preparing the users for the practical part. Users need to solve a programming challenge in Python, directing game-objects on a checkerboard to certain fields. Conducting a study involving 39 school students and three teachers, we are able to successfully display an enhanced understanding of different programming concepts.

Interactive and digital learning experiences are becoming increasingly important and used to improve various learning scenarios. In physics education, the use of digital simulations or virtual laboratories to support the learners' understanding is already part of most classrooms. Virtual reality experiences can be used to create even more exciting, engaging, and realistic learning setups to conduct experiments and work with simulations. A range of studies has shown a positive effect of virtual reality experiences for learning. In this paper, we explore the potential of physics education in virtual reality in school-based classroom scenarios. We present a study with 147 high school students from four different schools, to evaluate the potential of room-scale VR learning setups in classroom learning with a focus on engagement and learning experience and focus on dandifying potential use cases for learning experiences in schools from the students' perspective. In this study, we found that students described the experiences as highly engaging and a valuable tool to increase motivation in classrooms. They would rather use VR for learning in the classroom than at home. They prefer a PC-based VR setup over a mobile phone setup. Four main identified use cases for using VR in classrooms from the students' perspective are evaluated and discussed.

Understanding physical phenomena is still a challenging task. Three-dimensional interactive simulations are a valuable tool to support understanding. We implemented different physical simulations designed so that students can interact and learn with them. However, student engagement is crucial to support the learning process. Virtual reality applications offer a promising way to engage and immerse students in three-dimensional environments and to keep them focused on the learning task. In this paper, we explore interactive virtual reality experiences implemented with HTC Vive as an alternative form of learning tool supporting engagement and to support the ability to concentrate better on the learning tasks. We ran a two-fold user study in which 19 students evaluated the experience looking at engagement, motivation, usability, and learning. First results indicate that such experiences are well suited as a supplement to traditional in-class learning and that they support realistic laboratory setups and simulations in an engaging, interesting, and immersive way and help students to focus more on the learning task compared to traditional applications.

In traditional computer science courses, students do not often get the chance to experience an entire project cycle, starting from the idea development stage and ending with the final release of a product together with collaborators from different disciplines. Developing a game gives learners the possibility to experience an entire development cycle, to learn how to work in a team, and to learn new skillsets required to create games. Students can profit even more from an interdisciplinary and international setup. In this paper, we describe a first pilot of an interdisciplinary and international student game project, during which students from different backgrounds, and with different nationalities and different learning expectations can work together to develop games. We report on a first pilot with 24 students studying different subjects, such as computer science, law, or biology, in two different countries. First results show that such programs are highly engaging for students, can boost their employability, have a high learning outcome, and raise their interest in international collaborations.

This paper presents the Telescope project, initiated and hosted at Galileo University in Guatemala, which is an initiative for Latin American Region with the similar objective as Coursera or EdX. First it is presented and analyzes the current state of the MOOCs, showing real progress, the broader scope in the academic field and it's potential as a tool to support education. For Telescope, behavior of students, completion rates and drop-out will be detailed and analyzed, along with assessment approaches and communication methods from four different MOOC experiences given at The MOOCs 2013 experiences presented are from the following courses: Cloud based tools for education, Introduction to e-Learning, Medical Urgencies and Android development. With over 15,000 enrolled students, and learners from over 15 countries. Also, we will present result from drop out learners, from no shows to those who did not complete the whole course experience, presenting the main reasons for drop out: personal reasons, academic and other influencing factors such as course quality and interaction with the tutors, course contents, workload and time management; being the most cited reasons for dropout: personal and workload reasons such as not enough time, increase workload at the job, and also the academic workload was evaluated as too-high in some cases.

Attracting and engaging computer science students to enhance their mathematical and algorithmic thinking skills are challenging tasks. In winter 2013 we introduced a new teaching format for a course, which combines theory in computer science with hands-on algorithmic challenges, mathematical thinking activities, and collaborative problem-solving. Therefore, we introduced the pedagogical model Motivational Active Learning (MAL), which is grounded in MIT's successful format for teaching physics, Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL), and combines it with motivational strategies usually used by game designers. Results from the initial setup in class reveals that students indeed assessed the course structure as more interactive and motivating compared to other similar courses. In this paper we discuss the course design, issues, and the impact, and analyze the first results in detail.

Motivational Active Learning (MAL) is an innovative pedagogical approach based on MIT's teaching format TEAL (Technology-Enabled Active Learning) combined with advanced motivational strategies based on gamification design aspects. The main idea of MAL is to enhance learning outcomes using motivational and social learning experiences. The lecture format is designed for courses, which combine theory in computer science with hands-on programming challenges and collaborative in-course problem solving. The main features of MAL include collaborative learning, constant activities to stimulate interactions between instructor and students, immediate feedback for self-assessment, and motivational feedback such as badges or leaderboard information. The course is structured in the form of mini lectures with constant interactive challenges and interactions such as small arithmetic problems, programming challenges, or research and discussion assignments, which are available using a learning management system as supportive in-course technology to provide the interactive course content and according immediate feedback. First outcomes show positive impact on student motivation and attention during the lessons. Also, more students are willing to complete bonus tasks volunaryly do gain extra points.

Organizing a Programming 101 course for a thousand computer science freshmen poses a challenge. One major problem is the high dropout-rate due to insufficient social interactions and the missing feeling of presence. Collaborative home assignments can help to overcome such issues. However, due to scheduling conflicts not all students are able to meet in person to work together. Many tools support collaborative online programming, but have several disadvantages in comparison to face-to-face meetings. This work presents a virtual world environment, where student groups can meet online, but experience the advantages of face-to-face interactions. They can commonly use different tools for collaborative problem solving at one shared virtual location. They experience the feeling of presence, which increases the individual contribution, even from distant sites. Furthermore, the environment provides facilitated possibilities for tutor meetings, where students can discuss and present their solutions. In this work a first prototype of the environment is described. In addition advantages as well as potential issues or difficulties are discussed.

Cloud education environments consider all the cloud services, such as Web 2.0 applications, content, or infrastructure services. These services form an e-learning ecosystem which can be built upon the learning objectives and the preferences of the learner group. A great variety of existing cloud services might be repurposed for educational activities and it can be taken advantage from already widely used services without steep learning curves on their adoption. In this article is presented the design, deployment and evaluation of learning activities using cloud applications and services. The experiences presented here are from Galileo University in Guatemala with students from three different countries in Central America and Spain. This study reports findings from motivational attitudes, emotional aspects and usability perception. Selected cloud-based tools were used for the different learning activities in three courses in various application domains. These activities include collaboration, knowledge representation, storytelling activities and social networking. Experimentation results obtained aim to demonstrate that students are eager to use and have new and more interactive ways of learning, which challenges their creativity and group organization skills, while professors have a growing interest on using new tools and resources that are easy to use, mix and reuse. Thus, future research should focus on incentives for motivating participation as well as on providing systems with high usability, accessibility and interoperability that are capable of doing learning orchestration.

The research area of self-regulated learning (SRL) has shown the importance of the learner’s role in their cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies to self-regulate their learning. One fundamental step is to self-assess the knowledge acquired, to identify key concepts, and review the understanding about them. In this paper, we present an experimental setting in Guatemala, with students from several countries. The study provides evaluation results from the use of an enhanced automatic question creation tool (EAQC) for a self-regulated learning online environment. In addition to assessment quality, motivational and emotional aspects, usability, and tasks value are addressed. The EAQC extracts concepts from a given text and automatically creates different types of questions based on either the self-generated concepts or on concepts supplied by the user. The findings show comparable quality of automatically and human generated concepts, while questions created by a teacher were in part evaluated higher than computer-generated questions. Whereas difficulty and terminology of questions were evaluated equally, teacher questions where considered to be more relevant and more meaningful. Therefore, future improvements should especially focus on these aspects of questions quality.

Intelligent Pedagogical Agents (IPAs) can be thought of as embodied intelligent agents that are designed for pedagogical purposes to support learning. They can be designed in particular for virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are becoming an interesting medium for engineering education for the properties of visual collaboration abilities providing authentic learning experiences and for the opportunity of providing active learning. However, virtual worlds need more educational support to be more inhabited with increased learning services. Incorporating intelligent pedagogical agents into virtual worlds adds such learning support by adding intelligence, improving believability, and the opportunity to increase communication with an artificial educator. However the implementation of intelligent pedagogical agents and adopting them in a virtual world require several efforts with different aspects of implementation. This paper reports our first prototype implementation of an IPA interacting with a learner and a learning object in natural science experiment in a virtual world while providing supporting multi-modal communication abilities. The IPA has features of text chat based on the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML), a text-to-speech synthesis function, and non-verbal communication abilities through gesture animation. The implementation is presented through explained scenarios of the IPA tutoring an experiment or monitoring a learner avatar interaction with a learning object in a Virtual World. The IPA & the learning scenarios are implemented in the open source of Open Wonderland.

In the so-called 'New Culture for Assessment' assessment has become a tool for Learning. Assessment is no more considered to be isolated from the learning process and provided as embedded assessment forms. Nevertheless, students have more responsibility in the learning process in general and in assessment activities in particular. They become more engaged in: developing assessment criteria, participating in self, peer-assessments, reflecting on their own learning, monitoring their performance, and utilizing feedback to adapt their knowledge, skills, and behavior. Consequently, assessment tools have emerged from being stand-alone represented by monolithic systems through modular assessment tools to more flexible and interoperable generation by adopting the service-oriented architecture and modern learning specifications and standards. The new generation holds great promise when it comes to having interoperable learning services and tools within more personalized and adaptive e-learning platforms. In this paper, integrated automated assessment forms provided through flexible and SOA-based tools are discussed. Moreover, it presents a show case of how these forms have been integrated with a Complex Learning Resource (CLR) and used for self-directed learning. The results of the study show, that the developed tool for self-directed learning supports students in their learning process.

Despite the rapid emergence of game-based learning as a method for conveying educational content, constructing pedagogies which effectively combine elements of entertainment gaming with methods of instruction remains a demanding task. Through the notion of 'intuitive guided' learning, this paper presents an approach which seeks to facilitate a structured learning experience whilst allowing learners to explore a non-linear environment. To do so, a framework is presented which externalizes the assessment process in a serious game, whilst also providing a means for game content to be adapted dynamically to translate the outcomes of the assessment process to effective feedback. A developed prototype is implemented to examine the theory in-practice through the case of a game for civil defence training in schools. Using this prototype, a range of methods in which achievements might be related to learner actions are introduced, and their subsequent implications for intuitive learning discussed. Furthermore, the prototype illustrates how assessment rules can be defined as external to the game and subsequently used to generate feedback for a virtual companion who assumes the role of a more-able partner. The long-term potential of such methods as a source of data on player behaviour is discussed, suggesting further benefits the technique might offer to educators seeking to introduce game-based learning within the curriculum in a blended fashion.

The emergence of Web 2.0 and the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have fostered e-education to be more interactive, challenging, and situated. As a result, learners felt empowered when they are engaged in collaborative learning activities and self-directed learning. New forms of integrated assessment to support students when it comes to use complex-learning resources (CLR) within learning activities have become highly required. This paper discusses an empirical study about emerging forms of assessment such as, automated assessment, peer-assessment, and group-assessment integrated with CLRs in self-directed and collaborative learning. The first findings show that students were intrinsically motivated towards this approach. Moreover, automatic and peer-assessment supported the students to achieve their learning goals.

Learning through Social Network Sites, like Facebook, is a trending topic nowadays, especially since many studies report that students spend more time online in this type of sites. In this article, a case study of a collaborative learning activity with university professors is presented in the context of an online course. From a CSCL perspective, we present results of interaction comparing Social Networks Sites to traditional online forums within a Learning Management System, and the perception of participants in using Facebook for learning activities.

Western Australia's economy is largely driven by the extraction and processing industry. Caused by inhospitable climate and living conditions in the remote regions, where the vast majority of the natural resources are found, housing needs for personnel are both difficult and costly to meet. The provision of energy accounts for a big part of this since it often requires the transportation of large quantities of fuel over long distances. This would suggest a responsible and effective use of energy, but often the opposite is the case. Excessive wastage is more the rule than the exception. This results not only in high costs but also considerable greenhouse gas emissions. To address these issues, we present a distributed system which drastically reduces the amount of energy wastage without affecting the quality of living of the residents. By building the system to form a Web of Things we try to simplify its management, assure its scalability, and hope to foster its use in unanticipated ways.

In this paper, we will address an enhanced approach for online peer-assessment where new features of candidate answer marking have been used. Students are capable to select specific parts from the candidate answer and mark them as correct, wrong, or irrelevant. Special colors are used to tag the selected part of the candidate answer in order to help students giving a reasonable final score and to provide visual feedback for the answer owner. A web based tool has been developed, an experiment was conducted and valuable results have been found.

Based on the overall aims of the AdeLE (adaptive e-learning with eye-tracking) project, and in particular motivated by the decision of using a strictly separated system's architecture, the requirements for the modeling system and its implementation as a micro-service-oriented architecture are addressed in this paper. Furthermore, experiences and lessons learned as well as an approach for a more advanced modeling system in the context of the AdeLE research project is discussed.