Maastricht University is known for its Problem Based Learning (PBL), where students learn in small tutorial groups under the supervision of a tutor. In order to bring PBL to the next level and make use of digital innovations, the UM I-portfolio Board sponsors initiatives. Within the university BISS (Brightlands Institute for Smart Society), IDS (Institute for Data Science) and SSF (UMIO’s Service Science Factory) collaborated on the project UMind: a new digital tool to identify knowledge gaps with students and tutors during, before and after the tutorial sessions.
UMind provides students with a digital interface where they can create relational mind-maps to visualise the knowledge they have acquired. The data generated by making these mind-maps is analysed by a smart system and provides tutors as well as students with insights of what the entire tutorial group has learnt. Perhaps even more important, it also identifies knowledge gaps.
Great example of collaboration
This project is a great example of collaboration between various disciplines at Maastricht University. The project was initiated by BISS, as the institute operates at the cross-section of education, business, data science, artificial intelligence and philosophy. IDS analysed how to combine the mind-maps and delivered the technique in order to provide a valuable digital tool to the users.
SSF was approached by BISS to facilitate a design sprint to validate the project. In addition, SSF further developed the solution together with a small group of International Business students from Maastricht’s School of Business and Economics (SBE). Finally, students and teachers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) were involved because the Political philosophy course, coordinated by one of the BISS PI’s, Darian Meacham, was chosen as a pilot course to test this new tool. The next step is to run another pilot to further validate and develop the solution.
Contact us
Are you interested in working on the edge of research and society connected to digitalisation, validating your research or collecting societal challenges? Please contact BISS at BISS-secretariat@maastrichtuniversity.nl. You can find more information about BISS on www.biss-institute.com.
If you want to know how SSF can help you improve your existing services or develop new service concepts, please contact us at info@umio.nl.
