Overview
This page is tailored toward introductory STEM instructors considering running this experiment in their courses. We answer common questions below about what it actually takes to run the experiment and what we think you, and your students, will get out of it. Please reach out to the Contact listed on the side for any questions about this project.
Contacts
Perry Samson
samson@umich.edu
What is the CLUE: Contextual Linkaging for Undergraduate Education Project?
The CLUE project considers the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier for college instructors and their students. This project will design, build and test a new technology that promotes elaboration and reflection for learners while providing feedback to instructors.
The CLUE project will transcribe class sessions and then interrogate the transcript using Natural Language Processing to identify keyword and phrases used in class. Links are automatically created between the keyword and phrases to external resources in the students’ learning ecosystem, including specific pages in the course textbook, documents and activities in the course LMS instance, and open education resources.
The list is presented to the instructor after class so they can edit/delete or add suggestions and then released to the students. This system will provide a way for academic institutions to expand the value of their existing learning ecosystem by automatically linking learning technologies contextually.
Common Questions from Instructors
1. What do faculty need to know to participate?
Students entering college are not always well versed in how to seek help within a course. While they have access to resources outside class like office hours, readings and direct communication with instructors and teaching assistants many students do not take advantage of these resources. At the same time, instructors often make available a number of resources including articles in the LMS, external resources, homework systems and textbooks. The challenge is to support student help-seeking by providing links to these resources based on what was discussed in a particular class session.
2. What will faculty (or their students) gain?
Students will be able to search for specific content from class captures, videos, articles and their textbook and indicate if the content was helpful. The system uses artificial intelligence to link specific places in class resources contextually. The system evaluates class captures to identify what was discussed and then analyzes the content available in other course resources to direct students to content that’s relevant to class discussion.
Instructors will receive data on student use of the system and which articles and resources they find the most and least useful.
3. What are the steps involved in this project?
- Contact Leo Luo (leoluo@umich.edu) to indicate your interest.
- We’ll follow-up with an invitation to discuss what’s expected and if/how to proceed.
- Once accepted, a link will be added in your LMS for students to access search engine for class.
- Instructors will receive information on how to upload their videos into the system.
4. What are the expected control and treatment groups? Is there flexibility in this if faculty cannot run the project exactly as defined?
The “Control group” for this project will be a survey administered to students in the affected class to learn how they have traditionally sought help in their courses. This will be followed by an end-of-semester survey to determine if/how this intervention affected help seeking.
5. How will information be communicated to people who have expressed interest in the project?
A Slack channel will be created to communicate and share information.