ons using search and recommendation functionalities. The “Sort By” option allows learners to sort questions based on their difficulty, quality, number of responses, number of comments or personalised rating. By selecting ”Personalised Rating”, the platform sorts the questions based on the outcome of recommender system. The ”Filter” option enables users to filter the questions that are included in the results. They can request all questions (default), unanswered questions, answered questions, or wrongly answered questions to be included in the results. The “Search” option enables learners to search for questions based on specific content that may be present in the questions or multiple choice answers.
The results of the search are presented as a list of question cards, allowing users to engage with questions that best suit their needs. Figure 5 shows a sample question card. Each question card includes an overview of the question content, the topics associated with the question, and a sidebar in which the first icon shows the number of responses to the question, the second icon shows the average difficulty rating of the question, the third icon shows the average quality rating of the question, and the last icon shows the personalised rating that demonstrates the suitability of the question for each learner. Clicking on the question card will take the users to another page that would allow them to answer and rate the question.
4.3 Reciprocal Peer Recommendation
One of the main features of RiPPLE is its ability to recommend peer learning sessions. Learners nominate their availability in hourly blocks, and their preferences for providing or seeking peer learning support and finding study partners across the range of course-relevant topics. Figure 6 shows the graphical interface used for capturing this information in RiPPLE.
The shade around each of the time slots provides an indication of the popularity of that time, where darker shades indicate a higher amount of interest in the time slot. The knowledge state of the student is provided in the form of a coloured bar chart superimposed over the list of topics. The option to provide peer support is only available for those topics in which the student meets a required competency threshold, denoted in the bar chart by the colour blue. The knowledge state of students are updated using the their cumulative performance on assessment items progressively during the teaching period using algorithms described by in khosravi2017.
Figure 7 provides an example of a peer support recommendation in the student interface, identifying the potential peer learning supporter and the two topics for which support is available. Students then have the option to ignore or request a meeting with the recommended peer at the nominated time and date.
A “leaderboard”, as its name implies, displays individuals with highest score on a give task. Use of leaderboards in education has shown to increase student motivation and engagement [Landers and Landers (2014), Banfield and Wilkerson (2014)]. The leaderboard in RiPPLE displays students with the highest score on a variety of items including the number of questions contributed, answered, correctly answered, and rated. It also displays the students with the highest number of achievements, which are presented in terms of gamified badges. Figure 8 shows the leaderboard used in RiPPLE.
4.5 Personal Profile
Each student is provided with a personal profile that includes information on their engagement, achievements, notifications, and their consent on use of their data for educational research purposes.
The engagement level of students on a variety of tasks are presented using a visualisation widget. This widget enables students to compare their engagement using a visualisation type of their choice against their peers or their own targeted goals on a set of tasks. The default visualisation type uses Kiviat diagrams, which are more informally known as radar charts. Kiviat diagrams have been used extensively in visualising educational dashboard (e.g., see [May et al. (