Contact
Maastricht University is known for its Problem Based Learning (PBL), where students learn in small tutorial groups under the supervision of a tutor. In order to bring PBL to the next level and make use of digital innovations, the UM I-portfolio board sponsors initiatives. Within UM BISS (Brightlands Institute for Smart Society), IDS (Institute for Data Science) and SSF (UMIO’s Service Science Factory) collaborated on the project UMind: a new digital tool to identify knowledge gaps with students and tutors during, before and after the tutorial sessions.
Project case
Maastricht University is constantly searching and testing new trends in education and research. Together with BISS and other partners, it tries to find an answer to the following key question: Does Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to make a real difference with regard to Maastricht University’s educational innovation? AI technology is well-known for its fast pace of information processing. But what is the value of AI with regards to the PBL education at Maastricht University? What are the benefits for students? And how will AI affect our education in the future?
Exploration
The project is finding answers to all these questions. Have a look at the video below to see what has been explored.
Experiment
After the exploration phase we continued with the experiment phase in collaboration with the IDS and UMIO’s SSF. We ran experiments on the winning use case:
Project UMind provides students with a digital interface where they can create relational mind-maps to visualise the knowledge they have acquired. The data generated by making these mind-maps is analysed by a smart system and provides tutors as well as students with insights of what the entire tutorial group has learnt. Perhaps even more important, it also identifies knowledge gaps.
Great example of collaboration
This project is a great example of collaboration between various disciplines at Maastricht University. The project was initiated by BISS as the institute operates at the cross-section of education, business, data science, artificial intelligence and philosophy. IDS analysed how to combine the mind-maps and delivered the technique in order to provide a valuable digital tool to the users. SSF was approached by BISS to facilitate a design sprint to validate the project. In addition, SSF further developed the solution together with a small group of International Business students from Maastricht’s School of Business and Economics (SBE). Finally, students and teachers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) were involved because the Political philosophy course, coordinated by one of the BISS PI’s, Darian Meacham, was chosen as a pilot course to test this new tool. The next step is to run another pilot to further validate and develop the solution.
Contact us
Are you interested in working on the edge of research and society connected to digitalization, validating your research or collecting societal challenges, please contact r.wennek@maastrichtuniversity.nl
If you want to know how SSF can help you improve your existing services or develop new service concepts, please contact info@umio.nl
