Martin Dougiamas is the lead developer and director of Moodle Pty Ltd. He is developing a conversational intelligent tutoring system called Oscar that aims to mimic a human tutor by modeling the student's learning style and personalizing the tutorial. The document discusses

1. Martin Dougiamas
Lead Developer
Director of Moodle Pty Ltd #mootau13@moodler
Don’t waste my time,
just help me do my job!

2. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Who needs
teachers?
Learning Styles
Predictor
Student Model
Controller
Graphical User
Interface
Conversational
Agent
Tutorial
Knowledge
Base
Scripts
User
developing a novel conversational intelligent tutoring system (CITS)
called Oscar that leads a tutoring conversation and dynamically
predicts and adapts to a student’s learning style. Oscar aims to
mimic a human tutor by implicitly modelling the learning style during
tutoring, and personalising the tutorial to boost confidence and
improve the effectiveness of the learning experience.”
Computers & Education. Volume 59, Issue 1, August 2012, p95
“This paper proposes a generic methodology and architecture for

3. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Who needs teachers?

4. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
We love
teachers!

5. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Moodle is a learning platform that:
supports teachers with their teaching
supports learners with their learning
integrates everything needed for a course
is open in every way, yet sites can be fully private
everyone can use easily for free, from any device
provides the most flexible toolset (plugins, mods)
can scale to any size needed
allows anyone to contribute to global education
Mission

6. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Site Development

7. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
TESTING
FRONTEND
Interface, Usability, Modules
BACKEND
Platform, Performance
INTEGRATION
and TESTING
MANAGEMENT
CONTRIBUTORS
Institutions, Moodle Partners, Others

8. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
BACKEND
team
Michael de Raadt
Petr Skoda
Ankit Agarwal
Frédéric Massert
Adrian Greeves
Dan Poltawski
Mark Nelson
Rajesh Taneja
Marina Glancy

9. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
BACKEND priorities
Logging
Action
Event!
Other
Plugins
Log
Plugins
Logs
Reports

10. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
BACKEND priorities
Caching
Request
Database
Caches
Relatively slow data
Fast data

11. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Other BACKEND priorities
Performance
Libraries
Improved cluster support
Anything to help plugin authors
Bug fixing

12. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND
team
Michael de Raadt
Jérôme Mouneyrac
Rossiani Wijaya
Sam Hemelryk
Andrew Davis
Jason Fowler
Barbara Ramiro
Damyon Wiese
Andrew Nicols

13. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Responsive design

14. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Outcomes 2

15. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Course management

16. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Assignment annotation

17. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Forum improvements
Discussion subscription
Anonymous forums
Improved navigation (for all)
Posting stats
In-line reply

18. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
FRONTEND priorities
Analytics and reporting
Developing realtime messages
Supporting community-
developed analytics

19. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Other FRONTEND priorities
Accessibility
Activities, blocks
Bug fixing

20. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
MOBILE
team
Jérôme Mouneyrac
Barbara Ramiro
Juan Leyva
Dongsheng Cai

21. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Offline on:
iOS
Android
And soon more...
MOBILE priorities

22. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
MOBILE priorities
Notifications
AirNotifier
Server
APNS
Your
assignment is
due tomorrow
!

23. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
SITES
team
Barbara Ramiro
David Mudrak
Helen Foster
Aparup Bannerjee
Mary Cooch
Matt Spurrier
Martin Dougiamas

24. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
SITES priorities
Plugins

25. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
SITES priorities
Plugins

27. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
September 2013
learn.moodle.net
For teachers new to Moodle
Led by Mary Cooch
4 week intensive course
1 giant Moodle site
1 sandbox per student
Badge on completion
Leads to MCCC Certification

28. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA

29. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
research.moodle.net
2nd Moodle Research Conference #mrc2013
4th and 5th of October, 2013
Sousse, Tunisia

30. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
research.moodle.net
Library

31. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Research questions
How closely can collected data reflect actual learning?
What are the ethical concerns (such as privacy) and how can we
address them?
How should we include textual analysis in our dataset?
How can we know if a student needs assistance from a teacher?
(So that we can notify a teacher to intervene and help)
How can we identify other situations when a teacher should be
involved? (eg hot topics, unusual activity)
What activities are working well for learning?

32. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Research questions
What types of data/statistics act as motivators for students?
(eg rank in class, or points via gamification, or... ?)
How can we best use badges as motivators?
How can we best identify students at a similar level for auto-
grouping for projects, activities?
How can we best put students together in activities to learn from
each other? (mentoring each other, different levels)
How can we automatically keep notification rates at an optimal level?
(not too much that users start ignoring them, and not too little that
the mind is not kept active in that topic)

33. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Research discussion
Interesting?
Come to research.moodle.net

34. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Questions?
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35. Copyright 2013 © Martin Dougiamas - CC SA
Credits
Images from the nounproject.com:
User: Joe Mortell,