Papers by Patrick Jermann
In the first decades of the 21st century, significant attention was directed towards cumulatively... more In the first decades of the 21st century, significant attention was directed towards cumulatively disadvantaged and disadvantaged children. The purpose of these researches is, on the one hand, to learn about the socioeconomic status of these students, and on the other hand, to find solutions to their difficulties and problems (Fisher et al. 2020; Hernandez et al. 2021). In my research, I study the possibilities of these students in a specific approach, by examining the opportunities offered by learning the arts. According to literature (L. Ritók, 2010; Román-Caballero et al, 2022; Winston et al, 2022), dealing with the arts can greatly help the development and success of disadvantaged children through transfer effects. My research focuses on schools and programmes that pay special attention to talent development for disadvantaged children through music. This includes the Symphony Program, which is an adaptation of the El Sistema Program in Venezuela. The focus of my research is to explore the factors behind the success of the Symphony Programme, both from a professional and a human perspective. In this paper, I present the results of analyses based on interviews with mentors and music teachers who play a central role in the Symphony Programme. For my study, I conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with mentors and teachers. My results show that both an understanding and attentive environment as well as a special attitude and treatment are decisive factors in the success of institutions and children. In addition, the special methodology is also vital in the development of children.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Jun 1, 2015
Since 2011 the growth in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been so enormous that, according... more Since 2011 the growth in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been so enormous that, according to the Economist magazine, "the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations" (2013). One proposed benefit of MOOCs is that they allow considerable flexibility in organizing learning. At the same time, there is evidence that learning is associated with conscientiousness (O'Connor and Paunonen, 2007), especially planning, self-discipline and organization. This may be even more important in flexible courses than in traditional learning. This study explored the impact of conscientious behavior in a MOOC on student completion. Data from 27,993 students on a course was analyzed (including only those who watched at least one lecture and/or submitted at least one assignment). Students engaging with the course at roughly the same time every week were regarded as showing planning and self-discipline (high conscientiousness) and an index of regularity was developed. The association of this regularity with course completion was assessed. The results showed a moderately strong and highly significant association (chi-square = 1205.4 (5), p < .001), Cramer's V = .324. This suggests the flexibility of MOOCs may be of most benefit to those with conscientious study practices. The development of tools which help students to plan and develop conscientious practices may well aid student completion and learning in MOOCs.
A game-based approach to develop engineering students' awareness about artificial intelligence et... more A game-based approach to develop engineering students' awareness about artificial intelligence ethical challenges
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
The present paper compares Algo+, an assessment tool for computer programs, to an automatic grade... more The present paper compares Algo+, an assessment tool for computer programs, to an automatic grader used in a MOOC course at EPFL. This empirical study explores the practicability and the behaviour of Algo+ and analyses whether Algo+ can be used to evaluate a large scale of programs. Algo+ is a prototype based on a static analysis approach for automated assessment of algorithms where programs are not executed but analysed by looking at their instructions. The second tool, EPFL grader, is used to grade programs submitted by students in MOOCs of Introductory programming with C++ at EPFL and is based on a compiler approach. In this technique submissions are assessed via a battery of unit tests where the student program is run with standard input and assessed on whether they produced the correct output.
The use of digital tools has drastically increased in engineering education, accelerated by the C... more The use of digital tools has drastically increased in engineering education, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These tools generate important ethical issues, in particular in terms of privacy and fairness. However, very few teacher training programmes address those topics, which means that teachers are often left to figure out by themselves how to address these issues when they want (or have) to use digital tools in their teaching. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to a pragmatic approach to the ethical design of learning experiences that involve digital tools using a visual thinking guide called a 'canvas'. Applied and hands-on, this workshop will help participants to develop a practical understanding of the
We investigate the potential of gaze as a predictor for the quality of dialogue and the level of ... more We investigate the potential of gaze as a predictor for the quality of dialogue and the level of understanding in collaborative problem-solving. We unveil a triangular relation among collaborators' dialogue, their gaze pattern, and their performance in the context of a pair programming task. Pairs of participants were asked to understand a JAVA program while their gaze was synchronously recorded. The performance was measured as the level of understanding attained by the pair at the end of the program comprehension task. Gaze patterns were analyzed based on probabilistic hit based areas of interest called gaze tokens. A novel dialogue coding scheme was developed to capture the program description as well as collaboration management aspect of pair program understanding. Both the areas of interest and the dialogue codes reflect top-down and bottom-up program comprehension strategies. Results show that it is possible to relate gaze to the level of abstraction in dialogue and to the level of understanding.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2001
Routledge eBooks, Jan 10, 2023
In collaborative problem solving, metacognition not only covers strategic reasoning related to th... more In collaborative problem solving, metacognition not only covers strategic reasoning related to the task but also reasoning related to the interaction itself. The hypothesis underlying this work states that regulation of the interaction and regulation of the task are closely related mechanisms and that their co-occurrence facilitates collaborative problem solving. These assumptions are tested experimentally with a traffic simulator. The results show that co-occurrence of task and interaction regulation allow quicker solving of the problem, thus better performance. The experimental treatment aims at observing the effects of interaction meters on the accuracy of subjects' estimation of their participation. Interaction meters are visualization tools that represent the number of contributions related to the discussion and to the implementation of the solution.
This paper describes TinkerSheets, a paper-based interface to tangible simulations. The proposed ... more This paper describes TinkerSheets, a paper-based interface to tangible simulations. The proposed interface combines the advantages of form-based input and paper. Form-based input allows to set an arbitrary number of parameters. Using paper as a medium for the interface keeps the interaction modality consistently physical. TinkerSheets are also used as an output screen to display summarized information about the simulation. A user study conducted in an authentic context shows how the characteristics of the interface shape real world usage. We also describe how the affordances of this control and visualization interface support the co-design of interaction with end-users.
Routledge eBooks, Jan 10, 2023
Paper is not dead. Despite the progress of e-ink screens, smartphones and tablet interfaces, prin... more Paper is not dead. Despite the progress of e-ink screens, smartphones and tablet interfaces, printed paper stays a convenient, versatile and familiar support for reading and writing. Books, magazines and other printed materials can now be connected to the digital world, enriched with additional content and even transformed into interactive interfaces. Conversely, some of the screen-based interfaces we currently use to interact with digital data could benefit from being paper-based or make use of specially designed material as light and flexible as paper. Far from a paperless world, printed documents could become ubiquitous interfaces in our everyday interaction with digital information. This is the dawn of paper computing.
Higher Education, May 7, 2022
Due to the unprecedented situation caused by a global pandemic, the traditional way of teaching t... more Due to the unprecedented situation caused by a global pandemic, the traditional way of teaching that is reliant on face-to-face interaction between teachers and students has been dismantled. This article looks into university teachers' experiences of teaching under lockdown, with an intention to understand what the change meant in terms of social practice. The research follows a qualitative design, in which ten university teachers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Three themes interwoven with a common thread were identified through teachers' reflections, including displacement, routine, and role. The common thread was identified as the interaction between teachers and students, and analysing the quality of this interaction led to understanding the social kernel of teaching as embedded in social practice, suggesting that physical dislocation demands teachers to recreate meaning in the new situation. This change has been seen as difficult, yet unpacking teachers' perceptions provided valuable lessons for the future.
Social Science Research Network, 2017
We present two novel methods to predict students' grades using their action time series in Massiv... more We present two novel methods to predict students' grades using their action time series in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The main motivation behind this contribution comes from three main differences in the methods used in previous research. First, the methods used to analyze time series often aggregate the data, which discards the effect of the previous actions on the present actions. Second, most of the previous research has a common assumption that the actions are distributed homogeneously in time, which might or might not be true for students in MOOCs. Third, the methods used to predict students' grades are often based on linear regressions and correlations, which assume a normal distribution for the data generation processes, which might not be true in all cases. To highlight the first two differences we propose to use Generalized Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models. To deal with the third difference, we propose to use the Extreme Values Theory (EVT). The results show a significant improvement over existing methods in terms of prediction abilities. The results also show that there is an improvement even if a shorter time series data was used. NOTES FOR PRACTICE • This paper presents a new way to analyse the students' action time series in MOOCs. We show that modelling the conditional variance in the time series is as important as modelling the conditional mean. Moreover, we show that the extreme behaviour of students is predictive of their success in MOOCs. • This paper presents two new methods to analyse time series data in MOOCs, Extreme Value theory (EVT) models and the Generalised AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH). Further, a combined approach is presented (GARCH-EVT) and using fewer amount of data to predict success, it has been shown that these methods could be used to provide timely feedback to students which are predicted to be "at-risk" of failing. • The most prominent practical implication of the results presented in the paper is for designing and developing a feedback tool, which takes the simplest of features into account and provides valuable feedback to the students.
arXiv (Cornell University), Sep 20, 2014
This work is an attempt to discover hidden structural configurations in learning activity sequenc... more This work is an attempt to discover hidden structural configurations in learning activity sequences of students in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Leveraging combined representations of video clickstream interactions and forum activities, we seek to fundamentally understand traits that are predictive of decreasing engagement over time. Grounded in the interdisciplinary field of network science, we follow a graph based approach to successfully extract indicators of active and passive MOOC participation that reflect persistence and regularity in the overall interaction footprint. Using these rich educational semantics, we focus on the problem of predicting student attrition, one of the major highlights of MOOC literature in the recent years. Our results indicate an improvement over a baseline ngram based approach in capturing "attrition intensifying" features from the learning activities that MOOC learners engage in. Implications for some compelling future research are discussed.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
When watching an educational video, our eyes look for relevant information related to the topic t... more When watching an educational video, our eyes look for relevant information related to the topic that is being explained at that particular moment. Studying the learners’ gaze behavior and particularly how it correlates with their performance, we have found a series of results, which converge to an understanding about learner behavior that is more abstracted than the use situation or the studied learning contexts. In this contribution we present “Looking Through vs. Looking At” as a generative intermediate-level body of knowledge, and show how it can construct a Strong Concept (as developed by Hook [10]) in technology enhanced learning (TEL). “Looking At”, simply put, refers to missing the relevant information because of either looking at the incorrect place or lagging behind the teacher in time. “Looking Through”, on the other hand, is the success in finding the relevant displayed information at the right moment such that the communication, through verbal and visual channels, becomes synchronous. The visual medium becomes transparent and the learning experience shifts from interacting with the material to interacting with the teacher. We define formally and show how to quantify the proposed strong concept in dyadic interaction scenarios. This concept is applicable to MOOC video interaction, but also to other learning scenarios such as (collaborative) problem solving. We put a particular emphasis on the generative aspect of the concept and demonstrate, with examples, how it can help designing solutions for interactive learning situations.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2004
range of educational tools and settings (e.g. physical tools, sign systems such as human language... more range of educational tools and settings (e.g. physical tools, sign systems such as human language, Nardi, 1996), we restrict our discussion to computer software artifacts and collaborative learning processes such as socio-cognitive conflict, internalization, and explanation (for an overview, see Dillenbourg & Schneider, 1995). In face-to-face situations, teachers structure and regulate student interaction by, first, preparing the lesson plans and setting up the group work, and then, intervening in the collaboration when they feel it is necessary. With regard to computer tools, a structuring approach might involve choosing or designing artifacts that offer affordances for the learner to discover, understand, and use in her own thinking (Kirschner, 2002; Stahl, this volume). Two powerful ideas support this notion of computer support. First is the idea that the tools we use influence the way we think, learn, and act (Leont'ev, 1981; Vygotsky, 1985; Jonassen, 1992). Second is the idea that we can purposefully design tools that enable or facilitate certain desirable actions (Salomon, 1988; Salomon, 1990). Kristine Lund gives more detail about the subjacent concepts of mediation and interiorisation in chapter 3 of this volume. Three different types of systems may be used to structure collaboration. The first class of systems includes standard productivity tools (word processors, spreadsheets and databases), and communication tools (email, newsgroups, hypertext). Communication tools are often packaged with student management and evaluation tools in learning management systems (LMS) such as WebCT© and Blackboard©. These systems are available off-the-shelf, and can be installed easily and used immediately, without modification, to support collaborative learning. It is important, however, to understand how these tools are designed to support various collaborative learning behaviors and practices, and to choose the most appropriate tool. In this chapter, we will take a look at how Guzdial and his colleagues' (1999) used a hypertext production system called CoWeb to support learning groups.
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Papers by Patrick Jermann