DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173947 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2018-1000 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3136755.3137020 

Abstract: This paper presents conceptual ideas and a first prototype towards establishing a GamES (GAM)ified (E)lementary (S)chool MOOC for children who do not have access to schools. The project is being developed across several Bachelor student projects in collaboration between Cooperative State University, Karlsruhe and the German University of Cairo. A hybrid architecture is designed to support children on mobile devices with intermittent Internet access. Upon access, current learning status and new content are updated. The content consists of leveled games addressing skills defined by the US common core standards for K-5 in subjects Mathematics and English (that can be adapted to other languages). The children’s MOOC combines ideas of adaptive user interface, off-line personalized learning, common core standards, and game-based learning. The child’s user interface is gamified and after initial registration designed to be manageable for K-5 graders. A second interface addresses the community of game developers who are interested in donating games for certain core skills. In a next step, assessment and government certification of achievements will be tackled. The MOOC software is intended as open source to allow for community development.

Abstract: This work is part of a larger effort about understanding the effects of didactic materials on acquisition of reading and writing in German. In this paper, the focus is on progression in primers (beginner readers). Texts in various languages are analyzed in terms of complexity, as measured by entropy between letters and phonemes, from the point of view of reading or writing that text. The assumption is that a good teaching text would start low and increase gradually in complexity. At the same time, languages have different requirements on progression depending on their orthographic depth. The goal of this work is to compare German primers to various other languages for the beginning stages of reading skill acquisition. We show that there are difference across languages and a large span of approaches in primers of presenting material to the learner.

Abstract: Online education nowadays plays a very important role in enhancing the educational processes mostly for adults. Given this maturing technology and the number of children that lack access to safe education, mobile education for children is a logical next step and opens options that change their prospects. This paper is part of a larger project on mobile learning with games for children without access to schools. Games can motivate children to learn without the necessity of a teacher. The goal is to recommend learning games based on children’s preferences of past choices and ratings, which can supplement other recommender systems. The resulting implemented algorithm is designed as a plug-in to exisiting learning platforms that use games. Such a system was implemented and evaluated in a feasibility study on adults. We show that a prediction based on user’s choice and rating of games corresponds to a direct survey to determine the gamer types in 66% of the cases for 61 participants.

Abstract: The work presented here is part of a larger study that looks at the impact that struc-tured teaching materials have on improving orthographic skills. The first step is an analysis of the current status of linguistic structures in common primary readers (primers) since their key purpose is to lead children along a systematic learning path towards becoming proficient readers and writers. Using text processing tools detecting morphemes, syllables and sentence structures, several popular primers are automatically examined with respect to their systematic approach to language at the phonics/syllable, word and sentence levels. It can be shown that there is little apparent structure in today’s school texts at any of the examined levels when compared to some older schoolbooks (1877, 1904) that have a systematic and explicit progression at all examined levels.

Abstract: This paper evaluates an automatic spelling error tagger that is available via web interface. After explaining the existing error tags in detail, the accuracy of the tool is validated against a publicly available database containing around 1700 written texts ranging from first grade to eighth grade. The precision of the tool ranges from 83% to 100%. Some basic statistics about spelling errors in the existing data set are given to demonstrate potential research areas. The site can be used to further explore this data. In addition, new data can be donated and explored. This process will be described in detail.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21380-4/textunderscore