On 18 April 2024 the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning will organise the "Digital Education Research and Evidence" event. You are invited to join us at the annual meeting of the centre where we aim to share the latest development, bring the key players around the table, and discuss the next steps for the digital transformation of education.
The event will highlight recent developments in the field and provide the latest insights in research evidence on digital education by showcasing important research results from the LDE-Centre for Education and Learning and European expertise from the digital education field. Further, the event will stage European thought leaders of the Digital Transformation in Higher Education to present and discuss challenges and ongoing transformations towards digital education in the Netherlands and Europe.
You can register here or through the link on the bottom of this page.
Detailed Program
9:00 Walk in and registration
9:30 Welcome: Digital Education Research, Evidence for Designing the Future of Education (Prof. Marcus Specht, Scientific Director of the Centre for Education and Learning)
LDE-CEL is the driver of scientific research on the digital transformation of education. Research into the affordances of digital means and ICT for enhancing teaching and learning as also the effects of transformative learning and teaching are researched. We want to use this day of digital education and innovation to bring together researchers, innovators, educators, and learners to shape the future of digital education research. Key questions of the day will be:
- What are important design variations of digital technologies for teaching and learning? How can we use them to enhance scalability, personalisation, and adoption?
- What are the key affordances of Learning Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, eXtended Reality to help human teach and learn better?
- What are key skills of humans to teach and learn with these technologies and what are key challenges for the digital transformation of education?
- What is the evidence for enhancing teaching and learning with technology and what are the current transformations driven by Artificial Intelligence?
The day will bring inspiration, reflection, hands-on activities and we conclude with a panel of leading experts in the field of research on digital education in Europe.
9:45 Keynote #1: Artificial Intelligence in Education, Prof Mutlu Cukurova,
Professor of Learning and Artificial Intelligence, University College London
Abstract: AI in Education is more than tools like ChatGPT. This talk presents a multi-dimensional view of AI's role in learning and education, emphasising the intricate interplay between AI and the cognitive processes of learning. Prof. Cukurova challenges the prevalent narrow conceptualization of AI as stochastic tools, highlighting the cognitive diversity inherent in AI algorithms, and posits that AI can serve as an instrument for understanding human learning. Early learning sciences and AI in Education research, which saw AI as an analogy for human intelligence, have diverged from this perspective, prompting a need to rekindle this connection. It aims to present examples of research from his lab involving the use of foundational computer vision and large language models to support open-ended project-based learning activities commonly used in engineering education.
10:15 Coffee Break
10:30 Parallel Workshops
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Workshop #1: Learning Analytics Landscape in the Netherlands
(Manuel Valle-Torre, Annouschka van Leeuwen, Marcus Specht, Esther Ventura-Medina)- The workshop will introduce the current development and landscape for learning analytics, and the main activities and focus of learning analytics research will be presented. Further, the workshop will discuss participants' applications on a case base and world-case format for identifying challenges in several dimensions, such as data sources, methods of analysis and aggregation, intervention designs and learning objectives of LA interventions, as well as evaluation and further research needed for learning analytics applications and adoption. In groups, participants will position their cases with respect to these aspects, generating a visual overview of the Dutch landscape of learning analytics.
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Expected outcomes: Overview of current hot research topics in Learning Analytics in the Dutch Education system and beyond, main types of interventions and learning designs for Learning Analytics, Best practices in Teaching and Learning Analytics
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Workshop #2: Inclusive Programming Education
(Fenia Aivaloglou, Shirley de Wit, Julia Bolt, Anna van der Meulen)-
Shirley de Wit, TU Delft: But girls just don’t like technology?!
Many girls just don’t like technology, or do they? At TU Delft, 31% of the students and 30% of the staff are women. Increasing this number would result in more people who can fill STEM vacancies and more productive and innovative products. But why do we have this lack of women in many (but not all) STEM fields? Several societal factors affect the image of STEM professions, self-efficacy and interest development. During this presentation, PhD student Shirley de Wit will discuss reasons for and possible solutions to close the gender gap in STEM. -
Julia Bolt, Vrije Universiteit: Textual programming made easy!
Learning textual programming languages like Python requires a learner to know English and to learn complex programming concepts and syntax, all at once. Hedy is an easy way to get started with textual programming languages. Hedy is a gradual, multilingual programming language for education. In this talk, PhD student Julia Bolt will give a short demonstration of Hedy and discuss her own research into learnable programming environments. -
Anna van der Meulen, LIACS, Leiden University: Navigating a robot through a maze you cannot see: how young blind learners approach the computational concept of abstraction
Recent years efforts have been made to include young learners with visual impairments in programming education. These efforts have primarily focused on improving the accessibility of programming tools and environments. However, how these tools can be used to convey the understanding of abstract cognitive concepts to blind learners has been relatively unexplored. Specificities in visio-spatial mental modeling and spatial navigation in blind individuals can impact their approach to abstract concepts. In this talk, Anna van der Meulen discusses the case of young blind learners programming a bot through a maze, in order to explore how learners with visual impairments approach the computational concept of abstraction.
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Workshop #3: Evaluating educational innovation
(Erna Engelbrecht)Evaluating innovation in courses can be complex and is often reduced to student surveys. This workshop uses a two-phase model to guide the process of making the most optimal choices for designing a custom-made evaluation plan for your innovation.
Analysis of educational innovations and their context of implementation; Development of an evaluation plan that draws on the benefits of different evaluation traditions.
12:00 Lunch and Networking
13:00 Keynote #2: Evidence for teaching and learning, Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg, (Associate Vice-President for Education at EPFL)
During his keynote, you will learn more about what kind of evidence is produced. At the moment, researchers tend to compare digital against non-digital approaches while, in daily, practices, teachers integrate both. Researchers also try to eliminate the teacher effect, while experiments reveal they do modify the effects of EdTech.’
14:00 Parallel Workshops
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Workshop #4: Augmented and Virtual Reality for Education
(Arno Freeke, Michel Beerens, Roland van Roijen, Marcus Specht)- In the workshop current developments and experimentation around the use of Augmented and Virtual Reality (XR) will be presented. The workshop consists of 3 topics: a) Showcasing XR productions at TU Delft b) Scaling up XR: challenges and opportunities c) Legal aspects of XR (John Walker vragen van SURF)
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Workshop #5: Bridging the gap between ML/AI Education and ML/AI application in Education - CANCELLED
(Gosia Migut)- The workshop will shed a light on two perspectives: a) teaching ML and AI to computer science students so they become ML/AI engineers; b) building ML/AI systems for education by ML/AI engineers and educators. Those perspectives have different starting points and expectations. In this workshop we will discuss the need for bridging the gap between those perspectives and focus on how to build common vocabulary through teacher’s communities.
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Workshop #6: Students taking responsibility
(Remon Rooij, Olga Ioannou, Sylvia Mooij, Silje Dehli, Caroline Wehrmann)- In this workshop, participants will share and discuss concrete ideas on how to further enhance their individual or institutional teaching practices stimulating students to take responsibility for their learning process. For this, we will make use of an action plan template that untangles the pedagogical principles of their current teaching practices and the intended interventions for improvement. Second, they will learn to position those practices and ideas for intervention. This exercise is based on our framework that structures pedagogies and will improve their understanding of the broadness and complexity of the students-taking-responsibility theme.
15:30 Refreshment Break
15:45 Panel on “Digital Transformation of Education and Challenges and Opportunities”
(Moderator Marcus Specht)
Panellists:
- Prof. Ena Voûte (Professor and Pro Vice Rector of International Affairs for TU Delft)
- Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg (Professor and Associate Vice President for Education EPFL)
- Prof. Esther Ventura-Medina (Professor of Innovation in STEM Education at Eindhoven University of Technology
- Prof. Mutlu Cukurova (Prof. Artificial Intelligence in Education, University College London)
17:00 Drinks and Networking
We will end the day with drinks where you can discuss the day afterwards.
We will update this web page as soon as we have further programme developments. Make sure to sign up for our LDE-CEL newsletter by clicking here. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to share them at info@educationandlearning.nl