Dr Hassan Khosravi, UQ ITaLI - RiPPLE: A crowdsourced adaptive E-learning platform for recommending learning activities

Speaker:

Dr Hassan Khosravi, UQ ITaLI

Abstract:

E-learning platforms that recommend learning activities to students tailored to their learning needs are known as adaptive e-learning platforms, which have been shown to improve or accelerate student performance. Adaptive e-learning platforms need to have access to a large repository of high-quality learning activities, which generally requires a tremendous investment of time by instructors or content creators. This, in turn, makes it difficult to develop content-agnostic adaptive e-learning platforms that can be used across many domains. As a viable solution to developing such a system, we have created a platform called RiPPLE at UQ that harnesses the expertise of students in creating learning activities for developing its learning repository. Students are well equipped for creating effective learning activities that can help other students as they may utilise knowledge of their own previous misconceptions towards the creation of resources that have a lower chance of suffering from an expert blind spot. However, given that the learning activities are being co-developed by the students, there is a potential risk that the created content may be ineffective, inappropriate or incorrect. RiPPLE uses machine learning algorithms and moderation frameworks alongside learners' collective interactions with the content to ensure that that effective learning activities are being recommended to the students. Results indicate that using RiPPLE leads to measurable learning gains and that students perceive the platform as beneficially supporting their learning. RiPPLE is integrated into Blackboard and is readily available for use in any course at UQ

Speaker bio:

Dr Hassan Khosravi is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation and an Affiliate Academic in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at The University of Queensland. Prior to joining the University of Queensland, he held a Lecturer position in the Department of Computer Science at The University of British Columbia. He holds a PhD from the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in Canada. As a computer scientist by training, he is passionate about the role of artificial intelligence in the future of education. In his research, he aims to apply insight from adaptive learning, peer learning, crowdsourcing and recommender systems to narrow the gap between these large bodies of research, and practical implementations that contribute to personalisation of education.