PELE: Individual coaching of student projects at large scale
The Personal Electronic Learning Environment (PELE), part of the KITE-Award winning project in 2018, is a software to organize individual one-to-one coaching of student projects for large classes. The software enables the implementation of application-oriented and student-centered approaches already at BSc level with more interaction and personal feedback, either physically in a classroom or completely online.
What is PELE?
The software PELE has been developed at the Department of Computer Science for over 5 years. The system organizes individual coaching of student projects with regular feedback even with large student cohorts of several hundred students. Fixed exercise groups can be replaced by dynamic and more personal ones to change the whole course towards student-centered personalized learning. During Corona period, PELE was extended by an important element, which enables continuous distance tutoring with regular personal interaction.
The personal discussion makes it clear whether one has really understood the topic.“
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Due to the flexible registration I can manage the time myself and I am motivated to keep going during the semester.“
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The exchange with the teaching assistants is not only more intense, it is also better adapted to my personal needs.“
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With PELE the students have an assistant for themselves and we can respond to the different needs. In this way they also ask questions that they would not ask in a group.“
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Students can register when they are ready. They are usually better prepared and more active during the presentation session. It becomes immediately clear whether they have understood the topic or not. In addition, there is the possibility to clarify misconceptions immediately.“
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- Question:
- How did you get the idea to develop the software PELE?
- Answer:
- We teach more than 1100 first semester Natural Science students in Computer Science, where they learn the basics of programming and data management by working on projects with real data. In order to regularly discuss their individual project results with a teaching assistant and to receive personal feedback, students have to attend a personal one-to-one meeting of approx. 15 minutes every second week. We have been doing this for almost 20 years. Before PELE, students had to pick a number in a computer room and wait until they were called by a teaching assistant. This sometimes led to chaotic situations and the meetings were badly distributed over the semester. Nowadays, students register online for a meeting in PELE and the system automatically organizes hundreds of personal appointments and does the quality control for us.
- Question:
- How has teaching in your lectures changed since you started using PELE?
- Answer:
- Teaching has changed a lot for us lecturers and for the teaching assistants. In the past I was mainly focused on creating slides for my lectures. Since we use PELE, the basics will no longer be covered by the lecture. The students learn them better and more flexible with provided online tutorials according to a flipped classroom concept. To enable student-centered individual learning with PELE, we have to invest a lot of time in training and monitoring our teaching assistants, especially at the beginning of the semester. They have to be trained primarily in questioning techniques and feedback skills. With PELE we have introduced a new feedback culture in our courses, as students and assistants evaluate each other continuously.
- Question:
- And student learning?
- Answer:
- Analyses of learning time and motivation have shown that students learn more intensively and regularly when they have to present and discuss their individual project results regularly. At the same time, they build and expand their conceptual knowledge based on understanding, which proves to be more sustainable than superficially learned factual knowledge. Furthermore, misconceptions can be identified and clarified during the discussion. Students appreciate the fact that they can take control over their own learning process from the very beginning and can freely organize their learning time.
- Question:
- Do lecturers of other courses also use PELE?
- Answer:
- PELE is currently used in 12 different courses at D-INFK, D-MATH, D-ITET with more than 2200 students annually leading to approximately 10’000 formative assessments with personal feedback. The software proves to be very flexible and highly scalable only limited by the number of rooms and teaching assistants. At ETH, different scenarios have been developed for the use of PELE. Last autumn semester the first PELE-based course was held without weekly lecture and final exam. PELE was also used to discuss the final written exam individually.
- Question:
- During the Corona period, students and assistants were no longer able to meet physically. How did you adjust your setting with PELE?
- Answer:
- Before the lockdown, students and assistants met for the project presentation physically in a teaching room at ETH. This was then no longer possible. With an emergency release of PELE in March 2020, we have linked Zoom to PELE within one afternoon. The update made it possible for the teaching assistants to call the students in PELE, so that they were then redirected to the assistants’ personal meeting room where the actual presentation took place. This enabled us to continue our course seamlessly in the spring semester without any loss of quality. We will probably keep this element in the future even without Covid.
- Question:
- The software PELE was developed at D-INFK with Innovedum funds. How will the software be further developed?
- Answer:
- PELE is further developed by the Code Expert team at D-INFK. The current version has been in use for 5 years and will soon have to be replaced with a new software version. Thanks to our experience, we know exactly what the requirements for the new software are. We hope that with the new PELE version we will be able to serve the numerous interested internal and external lecturers.
