nderstanding and learning. Designing questions requires students to think carefully about the topics of the course and focuses attention on the learning outcomes; choosing distractors requires students to consider misconceptions, ambiguity and possible interpretations of concepts; and writing explanations require students to express their understanding of a topic with as much clarity as possible, helping them develop their written communication skills and deepen their understanding [Denny et al. (2008)].
identify their knowledge gaps. Students often lack the requisite skills for making good decisions about what and how to study [Biggs (1999)], which can leave them undirected and time wasted. RiPPLE uses knowledge tracing algorithms to approximate knowledge states of students, enabling them to identify their knowledge gaps.
receive a more tailored learning experience. Having course content that serves the needs of diverse student populations (e.g., those with differing academic ability, backgrounds, and generational expectations) is extremely challenging. RiPPLE allows students to receive a more personalised learning experience by recommending content based on their knowledge states.
compare themselves with their peers or against their target goals. Students are often curious to know how they are performing compared to their peers or are keen to set personal goals and track their progress. RiPPLE uses knowledge tracing algorithms and visualisations that empower students to track their progress.
become more effective communicators. RiPPLE promotes collaborative learning in a social, student-centred learning environment, where students learn to articulate their opinions, provide support for their views, and listen and relate to the views of others. Such learning communities lead to the development of “cognitive or intellectual skills or to an increase in knowledge and understanding”, or to the development of communication and professional skills [Falchikov (2001)].
enhance their social connectedness. Many students, especially in their first year of university, will have difficulty navigating their new academic and social environment and adequately exploiting the available resources. RiPPLE enables students to grow their social connectedness, connecting students with peers who can adequately help each other for collaborative assessments or in reaching their academic aspirations.
increase their digital literacy. Through exposure to innovative visualisation approaches, students will develop an appreciation for methods of communication and externalisation of knowledge from complex data sets.
RiPPLE enables instructors to:
utilize crowdsourcing to develop course content. Implementing adaptively in a course requires a large amount of new content and learning object tagging. Through the use of crowdsourcing, RiPPLE enables instructors to develop a large data set of tagged course content.
provide rich and immediate feedback to students. Instructors find it challenging to provide meaningful, rich and timely feedback at scale. RiPPLE provides immediate feedback to students on their progress and provides recommendations to help them overcome their knowledge gaps.
identify individual-level and course-level knowledge gaps. Instructors often find it challenging, especially in large classes, to comprehend individual-level and course-level gaps. RiPPLE informs instructors of these gaps, so that they can update their course content accordingly.
identify at-risk students early in the semester. Instructors find it challenging to identify at-risk students in large classes, while working within limited budgets. RiPPLE uses knowledge tracing algorithms to identify at-risk students.
Finally, RiPPLE enables learning analytics and educational data mining researchers to develop and validate their own knowledge tracing and recommender system algorithms. Currently, most researchers have to validate these algorithms using synthetic or historical data sets that do not provide compelling evidence that they lead to better learning. RiPPLE enables research