Skip to main content

Towards personalised reading games for primary school children: the role of adaptivity and learning analytics

When:
Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

No booking required

While the majority of research in AIED has focused on very granular domain model representations and adaptive tutoring for STEM subjects, there is a sparsity of work in adaptive approaches for language learning. Despite a recent proliferation of game-based language learning for early years, most approaches utilise a static representation of the linguistic content, aiming to address the needs of a few classes of prototypical users through high-level profiling. In this talk, we will present two interrelated strands in progress in the EU-funded iread project which is developing and evaluating personalised reading games for primary school children. First, we will describe the process used to discover, discuss and iterate with the help of experts a set of rules that inform the selection of the domain model features, the game content and its mechanics, as well as the underlying mechanism for estimating student ‘mastery’. Second, we will outline our participatory design process towards learning analytics tools that support teachers in design, planning and assessment activities.

Biogs

Dr Manolis Mavrikis is a Reader in Learning Technologies at UCL Knowledge Lab, a research Centre based in the UCL Institute of Education faculty. He does research that contributes to the mission of the Lab to understand and to develop digital technologies to support and transform education, and beyond. In particular, his interests and experience lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), human-computer interaction (HCI), and educational technology (EdTech). Manolis’s research centres on designing evidence-based intelligent technologies that provide direct feedback to learners, and in employing learning analytics to encourage awareness and understanding of the processes involved in learning.  Manolis has been principal investigator on a portfolio of large interdisciplinary EU projects most recently iTalk2learn, which has received Demo awards in the ECTEL and AIED conferences and an ‘Honourable Mention’ for potential business impact from the i-KNOW conference.

Dr Yvonne Vezzoli is a Research Associate on the iRead project at the UCL Department of Psychology and Human Development, part of the UCL Institute of Education. She holds a PhD in the area of Educational Technologies, and she has a background in Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics. Yvonne’s main research interests are in the design and evaluation of technologies for reading and learning, and in the design of innovative pedagogies integrating new learning technologies in educational contexts.

Contact name: