Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
  • Publication
    Fostering Students' Academic Writing Skills: Feedback Model for an AI-enabled Support Environment.
    (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 2021-11-09) ; ;
    Due to recent advances in natural language processing (NLP), a new generation of digital learning support systems is emerging, which make it possible to analyse the writing quality of texts offering individual, linguistic feedback to writers through various kinds of automated text evaluation. These intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have to be integrated into existing teaching practices alongside traditional feedback providers (e.g., tutor, peer students). Therefore, this paper explores how academic writing skills of students could be fostered by providing different types of feedback from a tutor, peer students and an ITS. It proposes a feedback model for academic writing in an AI-enabled learning support environment and illustrates the importance of the different feedback providers in an academic writing use case. Through this, the paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the changing nature of how students' academic writing skills can be fostered in the age of artificial intelligence.
  • Publication
    How to Deal with AI-Powered Writing Tools in Academic Writing: A Stakeholder Analysis
    Due to the advances of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, new AI-powered writing tools have emerged. They can be used by students among other things for text translation, to improve spelling or to generate new texts. In academic writing, AI-powered writing tools are posing challenges but also opportunities for teaching and learning. It is an open question in which way to sensibly deal with these tools. To address the issue, this paper investigates, what interests different stakeholders (students, lecturers, university administration) pursue in relation to AI-powered writing tools. Building on this, tensions between different stakeholders are identified and (teaching) strategies proposed to deal with these tensions. To discuss the findings in light of recent developments around ChatGPT, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted in April 2023 with five academic writing lecturers at the University of St.Gallen. The results suggest that as writing tools become more and more powerful, the need for strategies to ensure their reasonable and transparent use also increases.
  • Publication
    Computer Supported Argumentation Learning: Design of a Learning Scenario in Academic Writing by Means of a Conjecture Map
    In academic writing, the competency to argue is important. However, first-year students often have difficulties to construct good arguments. Advances in natural language processing (NLP) have made it possible to better analyze the writing quality of texts. New tools have emerged which can give students individual feedback on their texts and the structure of their arguments. While the use of these argumentation learning support tools can help create better texts, using them in an academic context also carries risks. Learning scenarios are needed that promote argumentation competency using argumentation tools while also making students aware of their limitations. To address this issue, this paper investigates how a learning design with an argumentation learning support tool can be developed to increase the argumentation competency of first-year students. The conjecture-mapping technique was used, to visualize our assumptions and illustrate the developed learning design. As part of a fi rst design cycle, the learning design was tested with 80 students in seven academic writing classes at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland. Preliminary findings suggest that the learning design might be helpful to improve the argumentation competency as well as the data-literacy of students (in relation to argumentation tools). However, further research is necessary to confirm or reject our hypotheses.
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  • Publication
    Student Perceptions of AI-Powered Writing Tools: Towards Individualized Teaching Strategies
    ( 2022-11-10)
    Due to the advances of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, new kinds of Internet-based writing tools have emerged. Among other things, these AI-powered writing tools can be used by students for text translation, to improve spelling or for rewriting and summarizing texts. On the one hand, they can provide detailed recommendations for the adaptation of text elements within seconds. On the other hand, they also produce inconsistencies and errors, that students might not be aware of. How to deal with these tools in an educational context is a difficult question. Since writing tools are usually used unsupervised and without further instructions, students may need guidance from the teacher in interacting with those tools, to prevent the risk of misapplication. To better understand this underlying issue, the paper at hand uses survey data of 365 freshmen students to describe and analyze student perceptions of AI-powered writing tools. Regarding AI-powered writing tools, different student types were identified by using the k-means clustering method. The results suggest that students have different attitudes towards AI-powered writing tools. Some students may use them in an unreflective, non-sceptical way, which can lead to (un)voluntary plagiarism. Other students may not use writing tools at all, partly because they are sceptic, but also because they may lack meaningful learning strategies in general (course repeaters). Depending on the different student types, individualized teaching strategies might be helpful to promote or urge caution in the use of these tools.
  • Publication
    Educational Chatbots for Collaborative Learing: Results of a Design Experiment in a Middle School
    Educational chatbots promise many benefits for teaching and learning. Although chatbot use cases in this research field are rapidly growing, most studies focus on individual users rather than on collaborative group settings. To address this issue, this paper investigates how chatbot-mediated learning can be designed to foster middle school students in team-based assignments. Using an educational design research approach, quality indicators of educational chatbots were derived from the literature, which served as a guideline for the development of the chatbot Tubo (meaning tutoring bot). Tubo is part of a web-based team learning environment in which students can chat with each other and collaboratively work on their group assignments. As a team member and tutor of each group, Tubo guides the students through the learning journey by different scaffolding elements and helps with content-related questions the students have. As part of a first design cycle, the chatbot application was tested with a school class of a technical vocational school in Switzerland. The received feedback suggests that the approach of team-based learning with chatbots has a lot of potential from the students' and teachers' point of view. However, the role distribution of the individual group members may have to be further specified to address the different needs of autonomous as well as more control-oriented students.
  • Publication
    Social Robots as Teaching Assistance System in Higher Education: Conceptual Framework for the Development of Use Cases
    This paper provides an overview of the current state of research on social robots in higher education and the existing frameworks to categorize and develop social robot applications. Based on the existing work, we present our own framework to develop use cases for social robots in the education sector. Our framework is based on a heuristic and symbiotic design approach that serves as a guideline for developing use cases and views human-robot interaction as two complementary and mutually reinforcing roles. We illustrate our framework by means of a use case that we have conducted in 2019 during the initial lecture of the large-scale course ‘Introduction to academic writing’.
  • Publication
    Who is Best Suited for the Job? Task Allocation Process Between Teachers and Smart Machines Based on Comparative Strengths
    Due to advances in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), computer systems are becoming increasingly intelligent and capable of taking on new tasks (e.g., automatic translation of texts). In education, such AI-powered smart machines (e.g., chatbots, social robots) have the potential to support teachers in the classroom in order to improve the quality of teaching. However, from a teacher’s point of view, it may be unclear which subtasks could be best outsourced to the smart machine. Considering human augmentation, this paper presents a theoretical basis for the use of smart machines in education. It highlights the relative strengths of teachers and smart machines in the classroom and proposes a staged process for assigning classroom tasks. The derived task allocation process can be characterized by its three main steps of 1) break-down of task sequence and rethinking the existing task structure, 2) invariable task assignment (normative and technical considerations), and 3) variable task assignment (efficiency considerations). Based on the comparative strengths of both parties, the derived process ensures that subtasks are assigned as efficiently as possible (variable task assignment), while always granting priority to subtasks of normative importance (invariable task assignment). In this way, the derived task allocation process can serve as a guideline for the design and the implementation of smart machine projects in education.
  • Publication
    Social robots in education: conceptual overview and use case of academic writing
    (Springer, 2022-01) ; ; ; ;
    Ifenthaler, Dirk
    ;
    Isaías, Pedro
    ;
    Sampson, Demetrios
    Social robots are increasingly being used in education. They can take over various roles including teaching assistant, tutor, and novice. This chapter aims to provide a conceptual overview of the phenomenon. A classification of social robots is outlined; the criteria are: visual appearance, social capabilities, and autonomy and intelligence. The majority of robots used in education are humanoid; Nao from SoftBank Robotics is a quasi-standard type. An important social capability is empathy; a model illustrating how a robot can show empathy is discussed. A taxonomy is presented in order to capture the various degrees of robot autonomy. To achieve autonomy, artificial intelligence is necessary. This chapter advocates for a symbiotic design approach where tasks are collaboratively carried out by the teacher and the social robot, utilizing the complementary strength of both parties. This may be in line with the concept of hybrid intelligence. The ethical aspects of social robot use are explored, including privacy, control, responsibility, and the role of teachers. Moreover, the acceptance of social robots is discussed. Overall, attitudes towards social robots seem to be positive; however, there are also contrary findings. Finally, results are presented from a technology acceptance study with a sample of N = 462 university students from the social sciences. The chapter closes with suggestions for further research.