E-LEARN@DEEC: Active Learning and Immediate Individual Evaluation

The project

Considering the several challenges that the university education system (and in IST, in particular) has been facing along the past years, the teaching community (and its students) has been confronted with the emerging need to revise and reformulate many teaching (and learning) paradigms that have been in place for a long time. The recent experiences related to teleworking and distance learning, combined with the digital transition and the emergence of several digital interaction means and platforms, have raised several challenges that had never been dealt with in the academy.

In this context, the main objective of this pedagogical project is to create an integrated e-learning system (E-LEARN@DEEC), aiming not only to develop new pedagogical approaches, but also to support in-person or distance assessment procedures covering various aspects: progress in knowledge acquisition, self-assessment, evaluation of teaching quality, standardization of assessment metrics, etc. Overall, the main aim is to promote new and better assessment methodologies, leading to continued study methods throughout the semester and on which students receive immediate feedback. Furthermore, the envisaged system constitutes a systematic support in the monitoring and analysis of the course and of its students’ performance throughout the semester. Moreover, it will also serve to reduce the teaching effort dedicated to the evaluation component, enabling a greater monitoring of the students and a better exploration of other pedagogical approaches. What was done

The implemented solution is based on the Moodle platform and includes several innovative aspects whose implementation has been essential for an adequate adoption by the different courses. In particular, and given the high number of students and teachers involved, a software module was developed that allows the use of IST’s centralized authentication system, thus easing user management without sacrificing security.

In addition to the installation and configuration of the software, achieved through the acquisition of a high-performance server (by DEEC), several templates and tools were created for importing/exporting materials to/from Moodle. Moreover, related documentation was prepared regarding the use of the system, support for content production and automatic/assisted grading. A teacher training session was also held, covering all aspects related to the production of contents on the platform.

Other relevant information

During the first semester in which the platform was made available to DEEC faculty (2nd semester of 2019/2020), the system was adopted in around 30 courses (from the BSc and MSc programs), involving almost 3000 students.

Nuno Roma (nuno.roma@tecnico.ulisboa.pt) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering