Assess@Learning is an EU project which aims to offer digital tools to help with formative assessment. The project includes a number of different scenarios from five countries that showcase the use of digital technologies in formative assessment. One of the scenarios is ViLLE - a digital learning platform developed at the University of Turku, Finland.
For more information, visit the Assess@Learning website.
ViLLE is a collaborative learning platform developed by the Centre of Learning Analytics of the University of Turku. It offers students and teachers detailed information regarding their learning process in the form of immediate feedback and learning analytics. All exercises gather a diverse set of data of the students’ work which teachers can use for assessment and development of teaching methods.
For more information, visit the website of the Centre for Learning Analytics.
You can participate in the trial by filling out the contact form and registering via a separate link delivered to you personally. After completing the contact form you will receive an email to the address you specified which includes an activation code and a link. Follow the link and input the activation code and other basic information. Once you have completed this step you will receive another email with login information that can be given to your students. As soon as students have the login information, you are ready to start the trial. You can access statistics and analytics with the activation code so you can assess student performance during or after the lesson.
See detailed instructions on how to use ViLLE below.
Both lessons are free to use after the registration process and they are visible for students. If you wish to hide one of the lessons from students you can change their visibility from the analytics view (see below).
Hand out the login information to students. If you wish to examine the results of individual students note the individual students and the username given to them.
Students can log in with the username and password at https://ville.utu.fi/. The lessons will be ready to use - you do not have to make any other preparations.
After logging in, students can choose which lesson to access. Remember to guide them to the appropriate lesson. After clicking on the lesson name, a list of exercises will appear. The exercises progress from easier exercises to more difficult ones and the maximum score of each exercise is 30 points. Above the exercise list students have a progression bar which shows their overall progression on the lesson.
Students can choose which exercises to work on. They can also choose the order in which to proceed. Students can also complete an exercise as many times as they wish. The maximum number of points from an exercise is 30. The lessons include trophies that can be achieved by collecting points from exercises. The bronze trophy is awarded when a student achieves 50% of lesson points. The rest are awarded as follows: silver (70%), gold (90%) and diamond (100%). We strongly encourage giving positive feedback - achieving a trophy is a cause for praise!
After the lesson, student performance and analytics can be viewed via the link used during registration. To access the information go to the registration page and input your activation code again. The lessons are accessible for one month after registration and the statistics for two further weeks after that.
N.B.! The teacher always accessess the system via the registration link but students use the normal ViLLE website:
After opening the analytics view you will see some key statistics from the lesson your students have been working on. If they have been working on both lessons you can switch the lesson from the drop down menu from the upper left corner. If you wish to see the statistics of an individual student you may choose their results from the menu on the left.
If you wish to hide a lesson from students you may do so from the analytics view. Here you will see an eye icon. If the eye is blue, the lesson is accessible for students. If the eye is gray it is not. You can change the lesson status by clicking the eye icon.
If you wish to give us feedback you can do so from the statistics view.
First, a dashboard of overall data from the lesson is shown. This dashboard includes the following information: overall accuracy, average number of submissions, average time spent on exercises and the number of active students. Accuracy is calculated from the number of correct/incorrect answers. Average number of submissions is the average of times students have submitted answers. Time spent on exercises is calculated from the time students have worked on exercises. This means that the time does not increase if a student is logged in but not in an exercise. Active students are those that have worked on one or more exercises in the lesson.
Under the dashboard you will find a table of students and their overall performance on the lesson.
The Lesson Progress table includes accuracy, points, percent of lesson completed, difficulty choices made by the student, activity sparkline and the time of latest submission. If a student has achieved a trophy it will be shown as well. Accuracy is color coded so that green signals good accuracy whereas orange and red signal possible challenges.
Finally, the page includes a scatter plot that shows student progression on the lesson. Each student is plotted on the chart so that we can see their points and time spent on the lesson. If students are struggling, they will end up in the upper left of the chart because they spend a lot of time on exercises (y-axis) but are not able to gather much points (x-axis). Gifted students end up on the very far right and lower than most. In a normal situation, a teacher could use this information to further examine the situation and offer differentiated materials that better match the skill level of the student.