Marcus Specht

• Professor
• Professor at Delft University of Technology

This document serves as a design methodology for VR applications to be used in career guidance and vocational education. The document derives the methodology from the theory and practice of career guidance and vocational education. The methodology itself is thus informed by the theory and practice of this domain and provides design recommendations...

Learner behaviours often provide critical clues about learners' cognitive processes. However, the capacity of human intelligence to comprehend and intervene in learners' cognitive processes is often constrained by the subjective nature of human evaluation and the challenges of maintaining consistency and scalability. The recent widespread AI techno...

Currently, artificial intelligence (AI) emerges simultaneously as an opportunity and a challenge to established traditions of learning and instruction. Although AI has existed since the 1950s, technological development remains intense. New sophisticated applications, which recently existed only in laboratories, are now on the market and have been q...

In the rapidly evolving domain of computer science education, fostering deep engagement and sustained motivation among students remains a challenge. This study introduces the Answers platform, a pioneering online learning environment developed at TU Delft. This research aims to reimagine the learning experience for Bachelor and Master of Science St...

This study investigates students’ online learning experiences based on their perception of the value this course creates for them through a comprehensive analysis of responses from 1227 participants in MOOCs offered by the Extension School of the Technical University of Delft. Utilizing the value creation framework by Wenger, Trayner, and De Laat (...

In this review article, our main goal is understanding the Networked Learnings used for professional development. Networked learning can be defined as a form of learning where information and communication technology (ICT) can be used to promote connections between learners and their peers, learners and tutors and learners and learning resources. S...

Motivation. Variable naming practices are part of the software developer’s profession, influencing program comprehension and code quality. Yet, little is known about how variable naming practices are taught in beginner courses. Objective. This paper investigates naming beliefs, self-reported teaching practices, and observations regarding variable n...

Computational Thinking (CT) is considered a core 21st century digital skill. The aspect of assessment is crucial and knowing what, who, when, how, and where to assess is important for assessment design. In this study, we conducted an umbrella review to gain insights regarding CT assessment in higher education. In total, we analyzed 11 reviews, focu...

Different individual features of the learner data often work as essential indicators of learning and intervention needs. This work exploits the personas in the design thinking process as the theoretical basis to analyze and cluster learners’ learning behavior patterns as groups. To adapt to the learning practice, we develop data-driven personas by...

This study is built upon a behavior-based framework for real-time attention evaluation of higher education learners in e-reading. Significant challenges in AI model developments for learning analytics have been 1) defining valid indicators and 2) connecting the analytics results to interventions, balancing the generalization and personalization nee...

Educational institutions worldwide were thrust into adopting an online educational models due to the COVID-19 pandemic exposing severe limitations of tools used in online education, much to chagrin of both teachers and students. However, despite these limitations, hybrid educational models garnered significant interest. Holograms have shown potenti...

Higher educational institutions have broadly adopted Collaborative Engineering Design (CED) activities to prepare students for complex problem-solving in multidisciplinary settings. These activities are non-linear and mediated by various social practices and tools. Therefore educators might struggle in facilitating the achievement of specific learn...

Technology-enhanced learning systems, specifically multimodal learning technologies, use sensors to collect data from multiple modalities to provide personalized learning support beyond traditional learning settings. However, many studies surrounding such multimodal learning systems mostly focus on technical aspects concerning data collection and e...

Describing and analysing sequences of learner actions is becoming more popular in learning analytics. Nevertheless, the authors found a variety of definitions of what a learning sequence is, of which data is used for the analysis, and which methods are implemented, as well as of the purpose and educational interventions designed with them. In this...

Contribution: This article presents a comprehensive overview of characteristics of educational designs of collaborative engineering design activities found in literature and how these characteristics mediate students’ collaboration. Background: Engineers have to solve complex problems that require collaboration. In education, various collaborativ...

Collaboration is an important twenty-first-century skill. Collaboration quality detection can help to support collaboration. This chapter addresses the collaboration quality detection and measurement: (1) to define collaboration quality using audio data and unobtrusive learning analytics measures; (2) to explain the design of a sensor-based set up...

Increasing student numbers in higher education, particularly in engineering and computer science, make it difficult for motivated lecturers to continue engaging in active teaching methods such as Flipped Classrooms and Work-Based Learning. In these settings, digital Peer Assessment can be one approach to provide effective and scalable feedback. In...

M.M. Specht@tudelft.nl. Abstract. Learning and educational challenges in the field of indoor climate and building services like energy systems are mainly due to the transformation of professional practices and learning networks, a big shift in the way in which people work, communicate, and share their knowledge and the need for additional workforce...

The energy management systems industry in the built environment is currently an important topic. Buildings use about 40% of the total global energy worldwide. Therefore, the energy management system’s sector is one of the most influential sectors to realize changes and transformation of energy use. New data science technologies used in building ene...

Leadership in higher can influence the structurally embedding of educational technologies in higher education institutions. However, HEIs are complex pluralistic organizational environments with loosely coupled systems, diffused power and goal ambiguity which makes governance of educational innovations a wicked problem in which they have to balance...

Our life is surrounded by digital devices. Engineering education is one of the cornerstones in higher education for future generations and computational thinking (CT) is deemed as a core component in various engineering curricula. The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), is the largest technical university in the Netherlands and computing; co...

Acquisition and internalisation of many fundamental skills rely on repeated authentic practice and teachers providing support during practice. Despite this well accepted norms in skills acquisition, much of our assumptions about learning skills, mostly from a cognitive perspective, remain nebulous. Besides splitting hairs to classify skills acquisi...

There is an urgent need for educating the next generation of learners with digital tools and making use of digital practices and skills. Education on computational thinking (CT) is widespread around the world with a dominant focus on K-12. Recently also higher education has come more to the focus of CTE. However, most of the work on CT in higher ed...

To adequately prepare engineering students for their professional career, educational institutions offer projects in which students collaboratively solve engineering design problems. It is known from research these projects can lead to a variety of learning outcomes and student experiences. However, studies that provide insights in the influence of...

It takes considerable time, experience, and direct assistance from teachers to become a skilled writer. Handwriting fluency is one of the predictors of writing quality among students. However, students do not receive enough teacher supervision as a beginner to develop handwriting fluency in a proper manner. The “Calligraphy tutor” presented in this...

This workshop is part of the ERASMUS+ project: RAPIDE: on Relevant Assessment and pedagogies for Inclusive Digital Education (https://rapide-project.eu) and is open to anyone who is interested in implementing or improving peer assessment in their courses. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to make an informed decision on a suitab...

The 6th APSCE International Conference on Computational Thinking and STEM Education 2022 ( CTE-STEM 2022 ) is organized by the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education (APSCE) and hosted by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning (LDE-CEL). CTESTEM 2022 is hosted for the first time in Europe by the Delft University of Tech...

With the growing interest in programming skills in society, programming will inevitably become part of national curricula. The research presented on this poster aims to address programming for everyone and hopes to contribute to the accessibility of programming lessons for both students and teachers with various backgrounds. In order to do so, we a...

The application of sense-reason-act (SRA) programming in contemporary education can ensure the development of computational thinking (CT) at a more advanced level. SRA-programming has been identified as an instrumental way of thinking for learning to program robots and encourages the development of the more complex concepts of programming. Visual p...

In this review article, our main goal is understanding the Networked Learnings used for professional development. Networked learning can be defined as a form of learning where information and communication technology (ICT) can be used to promote connections between learners and their peers, learners and tutors and learners and learning resources. S...

A guide to computational thinking education, with a focus on artificial intelligence literacy and the integration of computing and physical objects. Computing has become an essential part of today's primary and secondary school curricula. In recent years, K–12 computer education has shifted from computer science itself to the broader perspective of...

Motivation. Code reading skills are important for comprehension. Explain-in-plain-English tasks (EiPE) are one type of reading exercises that show promising results on the ability of such exercises to differentiate between particular levels of code comprehension. Code reading/explaining skills also correlate with code writing skills. Objective. Thi...

This article illustrates that the task design and problem selection are of characteristic influence to evoke sense-reason-act programming (SRA) among primary school pupils when programming robots. Research shows that the task design influences the development of computational thinking (CT). The literature provides evidence that the context, the pro...

Collaboration is one of the four important 21st-century skills. With the pervasive use of sensors, interest on co-located collaboration (CC) has increased lately. Most related literature used the audio modality to detect indicators of collaboration (such as total speaking time and turn taking). CC takes place in physical spaces where group members...

Visual programming environments are popular instruments in teaching Computational Thinking (CT) in schools today. Applying Sense-Reason-Act (SRA) programming can influence the development of computational thinking when forcing pupils to anticipate the unforeseen in their computer programs. SRA-programming originates from the programming of tangible...

Collaboration is one of the important 21st-century skills. It can take place in remote or co-located settings. Co-located collaboration (CC) is a very complex process that involves subtle human interactions that can be described with indicators like eye gaze, speaking time, pitch, and social skills from different modalities. With the advent of sens...

High-quality elaborative peer feedback is a blessing for both learners and teachers. However, learners can experience difficulties in giving high-quality feedback on complex skills using textual analytic rubrics. High-quality elaborative feedback can be strengthened by adding video-modeling examples with embedded self-explanation prompts, turning t...

Collaboration is an important 21st Century skill. Co-located (or face-to-face) collaboration (CC) analytics gained momentum with the advent of sensor technology. Most of these works have used the audio modality to detect the quality of CC. The CC quality can be detected from simple indicators of collaboration such as total speaking time or complex...

This study investigates the development of algorithmic thinking as a part of computational thinking skills and self-efficacy of primary school pupils using programmable robots in different instruction variants. Computational thinking is defined in the context of twenty-first century skills and describes processes involved in (re)formulating a probl...

Learners in the process of developing complex skills need a rich mental model of what such skills entail. Textual analytics rubrics (TR) are a widely used instrument to support formative assessment of complex skills, supporting feedback, reflection, and thus mental model development of complex skills. However, the textual nature of a rubric limits...

Personal data use is increasingly permeating our everyday life. Informed consent for personal data use is a central instrument for ensuring the protection of personal data. However, current informed consent practices often fail to actually inform data subjects about the use of personal data. This article presents the results of a requirements analy...

Unequal stakeholder engagement is a common pitfall of adoption approaches of learning analytics in higher education leading to lower buy-in and flawed tools that fail to meet the needs of their target groups. With each design decision, we make assumptions on how learners will make sense of the visualisations, but we know very little about how stude...

We developed the CPR Tutor, a real-time multimodal feedback system for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training. The CPR Tutor detects mistakes using recurrent neural networks for real-time time-series classification. From a multimodal data stream consisting of kinematic and electromyographic data, the CPR Tutor system automatically detects the...

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to automatically mine latent patterns from educational data holds great potential to inform teaching and learning practices. However, the current AI technology mostly works as "black box"-only the inputs and the corresponding outputs are available, which largely impedes researcher...

Background. Programming is a challenging and highly important topic for introducing learners to our digital world. Research has shown that motivation plays a key role in programming performance. Gamification using digital badges has the potential to influence motivation, provide social recognition and encourage learner participation. More research...

Experts are imperative for supporting expertise development in apprentices but learning from them is difficult. In many cases, there are shortages of experts to train apprentices. To address this issue, we use wearable sensors and augmented reality to record expert performance for supporting the training of apprentices. In this context, we present...

Collaboration is an important 21st century skill; it can take place in a remote or co-located setting. Co-located collaboration (CC) gives rise to subtle human interactions that can be described with multimodal indicators like gaze, speech and social skills. In this demo paper, we first give a brief overview of related work that has identified indi...

Body-worn sensors can be used to capture, analyze, and replay human performance for training purposes. The key challenge to any such approach is to establish validity that the captured expert experience is actually suitable for training. In this paper, to evaluate this, we apply a questionnaire-based expert assessment and a complementary trainee kn...

Over the past few years, massive online open courses (MOOCs) have been increasingly identified as technologies that could transform education, by providing free and high-quality content to anyone with an Internet connection. However, despite these potentials, MOOCs generally fail to keep their participants on board. One of the reasons for this phen...

In this demo paper, we introduce the Multimodal Pipeline, a prototypical approach for the collection, storing, annotation, processing and exploitation of multimodal data for supporting learning. At the current stage of development, the Multimodal Pipeline consists of two relevant prototypes: 1) Multimodal Learning Hub for the collection and storing...

Gamification has recently been presented as a successful strategy to engage users, with potential for online education. However, while the number of publications on gamification has been increasing in recent years, a classification of its empirical effects is still missing. We present a systematic literature review conducted with the purpose of clo...

Sensors can monitor physical attributes and record multimodal data in order to provide feedback. The application calligraphy trainer, exploits these affordances in the context of handwriting learning. It records the expert’s handwriting performance to compute an expert model. The application then uses the expert model to provide guidance and feedba...

Modern technologies increasingly make use of personal data to provide better services. Technologies using biometric data for identity and authorship verification in the context of e-assessment are a case in point. Previous studies in e-health described a privacy paradox in relation to consent to personal data use: even when people consider protecti...

This study investigated to what extent multimodal data can be used to detect mistakes during Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) training. We complemented the Laerdal QCPR ResusciAnne manikin with the Multimodal Tutor for CPR, a multi-sensor system consisting of a Microsoft Kinect for tracking body position and a Myo armband for collecting electrom...

Learners can experience difficulties to form a mental model of a complex skill and what its mastery implicates in terms of actual behavior. Text-based analytic rubrics can support training and formative assessment of complex skills. However, they lack (1) contextual information needed to convey real-world attributes (2) sensor-motoric information (...

We introduce the Multimodal Learning Analytics Pipeline, a generic approach for collecting and exploiting multimodal data to support learning activities across physical and digital spaces. The MMLA Pipeline facilitates researchers in setting up their multimodal experiments, reducing setup and configuration time required for collecting meaningful da...

For learners, it can be difficult to imagine how to perform a complex skill based on textual information from solely a text-based analytic rubric. Rubrics lack (1) the contextual information needed to convey real-world attributes (2) the dynamic information (such as gesturing in the complex skill of presenting) (3) the procedural information requir...

In the context of e-assessment, this study investigates students’ attitudes towards personal data sharing for identity and authorship verification purposes, with the aim of optimising informed consent practice.

Goal achievement is a measure of success; this could be particularly true in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC), which are approached by a massive audience with an enormous variety of needs. However, in MOOC one is unlikely to find solutions which allow students to pursue their individual goals and achieve them. Inspired by implementation intention...

This paper introduces the Visual Inspection Tool (VIT) which supports researchers in the annotation of multimodal data as well as the processing and exploitation for learning purposes. While most of the existing Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) solutions are tailor-made for specific learning tasks and sensors, the VIT addresses the data annotat...

The chapter highlights the role of sensors for supporting seamless learning experiences. In the first part, the relation between sensor tracking of learning activities and research around real-time feedback in educational situations is introduced. The authors present an overview of the kinds of sensor data that have been used for educational purpos...

Background Learners can experience difficulties to imagine what it means to master a complex skill in terms of concrete behavior using solely a text-based analytic rubric (TR). The Viewbrics-project aims to foster learners’ mental models of complex skills through the process of Formative Assessment (FA) combined with ‘video enhanced rubrics with m...

This PhD research project has multiple focus points. Using the help of Multimodal Learning Analytics with the help of sensors to understand how co-located collaboration takes place, identifying the indicators of collaboration (such as pointing at peer, looking at peer, making constructive interruptions, etc.) and designing a collaboration framework...

The social and individual aspects of MOOCs are two sides of the same coin. However, while the majority of MOOC designs do not valorise the potential that a massive audience could bring in, several studies highlight the solo-mission mode of MOOC users' experience. Based on implementation intention, social presence, social influence and flow theory w...

p> E‑Learning has become a common way to teach and learn. The number of technologies for a variety of educational purposes is already quite high and constantly rising. Scientific experiments and studies increasingly confirm the usefulness of various technologies for teaching purposes. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of formal training and suppo...

Learners aiming to master a complex skill may benefit from the combination of abstract information found in a text-based analytical rubric and concrete information provided by a video modeling example. In this paper, we address the design dilemmas of combining video modeling examples and rubrics into a Video Enhanced Rubric. We propose a model to a...

Collaboration is an important 21st century skill; it can take place in a remote or co-located setting. Co-located collaboration (CC) is a very complex process which involves subtle human interactions that can be described with multimodal indicators (MI) like gaze, speech and social skills. In this paper, we first give an overview of related work th...

Multimodality in learning analytics and learning science is under the spotlight. The landscape of sensors and wearable trackers that can be used for learning support is evolving rapidly, as well as data collection and analysis methods. Multimodal data can now be collected and processed in real time at an unprecedented scale. With sensors, it is pos...

Experts are imperative for training apprentices, but learning from experts is difficult. Experts often struggle to explicate and/or verbalize their knowledge or simply overlook important details due to internalization of their skills, which may make it more difficult for apprentices to learn from experts. In addition, the shortage of experts to sup...

[Note that this is not the final version of the paper and final version will be available in 13th EC-TEL conference at Leeds, UK after September 6th, 2018 for download and reading. This is only a PREPRINT.] Collaboration is an important st century skill; it can take place in a remote or co-located setting. Co-located collaboration (CC) is a very co...

Educational practitioners have stressed the relevance of providing learners with a set of 21th century skills that will allow them to face current life challenges. Among others this includes communication and social skills such as public speaking, argumentation, negotiation, etc. Besides the acquisition of knowledge and techniques, these skills hav...

Augmented reality and sensor technologies have been analysed extensively in several domains including education and training. Although, varieties of use cases and applications exist, these studies were conducted in controlled laboratory environments. This paper reports on the first user study of augmented reality prototype developed to support stud...

In den letzten zehn Jahren wurde mobile Technologie mehr und mehr zu einer Standardkomponente im Methodenkatalog des forschenden Lernens. Nichtsdestotrotz wurden oft der pädagogische Mehrwert und der sinnvolle Einsatz hinterfragt. In diesem Beitrag haben die Autoren 62 Systeme zur Unterstützung von mobilem forschendem Lernen sowie die Nutzung von m...

Learning analytics can bridge the gap between learning sciences and data analytics, leveraging the expertise of both fields in exploring the vast amount of data generated in online learning environments. A typical learning analytics intervention is the learning dashboard, a visualisation tool built with the purpose of empowering teachers and learne...

This article describes the theory-informed design of the "ELENA goes shopping" mobile game and reports on the evaluation of its effectiveness through a design research approach. The game aimed to foster young children's (aged 4-8) interest in a neighboring (geographically proximate) language and to familiarize them with its sounds, pronunciation an...

Gamification has gained great interest recently in several fields. However, while the literature reports that a gamification design relying on external motivation only can lead users to cognitive dissonance, most gamification approaches use points, badges and leaderboards as dominant game elements. We present our developed testable predictions with...