ViLLE

Electronic learning path

The ViLLE eLearning path makes it possible to enhance and differentiate teaching. It introduces gamified, automatically assessed and motivating tasks into math, programming, and language teaching, while making tracking progress in studies easier.

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Finland 100

Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

Finland 100

Web presence

2015

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Target group

All

Updated

March 2017

ViLLE is a tool that enables and supports personalized learning using a new kind of learning analytics.

About the innovation

What is it all about?

Digitalization provides new opportunities for learning. The electronic learning path ViLLE is a good example of how digitalization can be used to support learning in a meaningful way. ViLLE is a tool that enables and supports personalized learning using innovative learning analytics.

ViLLE’s learning paths have been developed to form a continuum from primary school to university. Learning paths include ready-made mathematics, programming and language tasks for students. Students can progress at their own pace and according to their own skill level. This way students works in their own zone of proximal development, and differentiating happens automatically. With the help of ViLLE, students get to practice new skills with extensive repetition, which is essential for learning and internalizing new skills. Students may well do up to 150–200 tasks in an hour.

Learning paths include automatic assessment. This means that the students get instant feedback from their answers, which improves students' self-assessment skills. ViLLE also provides the teacher with versatile learning analytics. The teacher is able to track various statistics: the order in which tasks have been completed, time spent on them, results, and other information on the students’ answers to the assignments. All statistical data is available to the teacher in ViLLE and can be utilized to support and assess learning and to identify learning difficulties.

The electronic learning material is adaptable to the textbook series used by the teacher. Teachers can also easily create their own online courses, tasks and assignments, which are evaluated automatically. In addition, teachers can join the ViLLE community, where by sharing their own work they get feedback from colleagues thus contributing to the learning community, regardless of place and time.

All teachers automatically have access to content created in ViLLE, but it is also possible to add private material with user restrictions.

More than 2000 primary and secondary schools across Finland have successfully implemented the mathematics (integrated programming) or mother tongue and literature learning path based on the ViLLE learning system. Feedback from students and teachers has been very positive.

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

Innovativeness

ViLLE enables the benefits of automatic evaluation and immediate feedback as a part of all teaching.

Impact

ViLLE provides a concrete way to utilize learning analytics to enhance teaching and assessment.

Scalability

It is suitable for students of all ages!

Implementation steps

Get to know ViLLE and register!

ViLLE is a straightforward concept for studying, since all the teaching material is found through the same login and the learning material can be shared with the students online.

This way students can progress at their own pace and return to the learning material to look for answers when they face a challenging assignment.

Using ViLLE is free for both teachers and students. Teachers get access to the ViLLE IDs by attending ViLLE training either online or training arranged for teachers at schools. All training options and prices can be found on the ViLLE Team website where enrolling in ViLLE training is also possible. Since ViLLE is being developed as a research project as part of University of Turku’s Center of Learning Analytics’ functions, prices have been kept as low as possible.

ViLLE includes many ready-to-use sets of tasks and assignments for different grade-levels. At present, a mathematics learning path with integrated programming assignments is available for grades 1–7, a mother tongue and literature learning path for grades 1–6 and separate programming courses for junior high and high schools. In addition, ViLLE has over 40,000 tasks and assignments for all subjects, accessible to everyone. ViLLE's built-in editors allow teachers to create and share tasks, assignments, tutorials and courses themselves.

Automatically assessed tasks

ViLLE's ready-made courses are designed so that the teacher can include them directly in the lessons.

ViLLE provides teachers with all the material from slides to tasks and assessment. Courses and materials are designed so that the teacher can, if desired, modify them and apply them to suit the instruction.

There are three types of tasks:

General tasks are customizable for any subject with the ViLLE task editor. The teacher can create tasks from desired content.

Math tasks can be found in three degrees of difficulty and they include gamified tasks.

Programming tasks teach the use of algorithms and also writing and executing code.

Electronic learning path

The ViLLE learning path includes the reformed Finnish core curriculum compliant math and programming classes for grades 1 to 7 and mother tongue and literature e-learning material for grades 1 to 6.

One lesson per week is automatically assessed. Students can easily complete about 150 to 200 tasks in one lesson. The e-learning material is adaptable to the textbook series in use and offers excellent opportunities for differentiating and learning ICT skills.

The e-learning path uses versatile learning analytics to provide the teacher with the best tools for assessing and supporting students. ViLLE automatically recognizes the learning difficulties associated with the answers given by the students in different areas and informs the teacher of these weekly by e-mail. In addition, the teacher can follow the students’ progress in their studies progress in real time.

The learning path supports student learning and self-assessment. Motivating, gamified tasks and clear goals make learning meaningful, thus helping students solve more tasks than in other subjects combined. Tasks are assessed automatically and students get immediate feedback. Differentiating and adaptive tasks enable students to progress according to their own competence.

Cooperation and collaborative learning

Collaborative learning can be encouraged both between teachers and students, as ViLLE emphasizes interaction.

In tutorials, students solve tasks in groups of 2 to 8. Start with small groups and increase the size of the teams as you progress with the tasks. Every student in the group gets points for every task completed, but if the task isn’t finished, the student can continue working on it independently .

Teachers collaborate by sharing tasks and assignments that they create for the platform. Teachers can also share courses and tutorials and get feedback from each other.

Lessons and voting

ViLLE's lessons are interactive. Real-time questions during lessons can be used to measure students’ learning.

The questions can also be used in a vote to determine students’ thoughts and views. Students can participate in voting online by accessing ViLLE, or alternatively install a separate application on their mobile device from App Store or Google Play.

Tutorials

In tutorial based learning tasks are done either in pairs or in small groups of 2 to 4, since the goal is that the students discuss the topic being taught together as active learners.

This way, knowledge is constructed within the learning community. ViLLE's tutorials are a combination of usually automatically reviewed tasks and a variety of learning materials, such as images, videos, or lesson material. Tutorial-based teaching has been used in particular for teaching programming in junior high, high schools and higher education levels. According to a number of studies (c.f. https://oppimisanalytiikka.fi/fi/publications), it improves course pass rates and the average grade significantly.

Grading and Assessing Students

Teacher assessment is often a kind of combination of teacher and computer evaluation.

Students can get points for attendance, presentations and assignments, or the teacher can perform the assessment according to the criteria they choose.

In addition, student attendance can be automatically recorded by RFID readers, or the teacher can record attendance in traditional student management systems.

ViLLE collects learning activity data and students can get points based on their activity, for example by making entries in discussion forums, voting in lessons, or filling in their learning diary.

Exams

ViLLE's electronic exams can be automatically assessed, evaluated by a teacher, or a mixture of both.

In automatically assessed exams, the students get instant feedback after the exam, so they get an understanding of their skills immediately.

The ViLLE Evaluation Tool helps the teacher assess exams as well as comment and grade them. Images and videos can be attached to the electronic exams by uploading or downloading them.

With monitoring functions, the teacher can monitor the progress of the exam in real-time and individually provide additional time for completing the exam.

Using the ViLLE mobile application

The ViLLE mobile application allows students to keep up-to-date on course events.

The app works with Android and Apple devices. The mobile app informs students on course events, tasks, and timetables. The application can also be used for activating students during lessons by sending them multiple choice questions.

Download the app from App Store or from Google Play.