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Latest News My Profile Contact Bolton College's ILT Projects Consultancy
Articles and Resources


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Latest News My Profile Contact Bolton College's ILT Projects Consultancy
Articles and Resources
Latest News


CAMPUS CHATBOTS

Published: 23rd May 2024

Bolton College is pleased to announce that it recently received an offer of
grant funding from the Ufi VocTech Trust for the campus chatbot project. We look
forward to sharing more once the project gets underway.




FIRSTPASS - ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION AND FEEDBACK

Published: 18th February 2024

The following video shows the conversational interface between student and
teacher on Bolton College's FirstPass platform. The use of dialogic feedback
will also be supported when colleagues introduce a conversational interface
between students, teachers and chatbots later in the 2023-24 academic year.




I PASSED MY PHD VIVA WITH NON-MAJOR AMENDMENTS

Published: 24th November 2023

Over the last few years I have been pursuing a PhD by retrospective practice at
The University of Bolton. On the 24th of November 2023 I passed my viva with
non-major amendments. Professor Dai Griffiths, Dr. Duncan Cross and Professor
Paul Hollins have been wonderful supervisors over that time. I am nearly there,
amendments to do and then sign-off.

I am very grateful to the senior leadership team at Bolton College for
supporting and financing my research. I am also incredibly lucky to be working
alongside my colleagues in the College’s ILT Team who continue to explore,
design and build innovative AiED services.

As part of the University of Bolton Group, and regardless of seniority,
colleagues at Bolton College have the opportunity to pursue postgraduate studies
at the University of Bolton as part of a fee waiver policy. Without this policy
in place, it would have been impossible to finance my research. So I am
incredibly grateful to the College and to the University for all their support
and help.


AN OVERVIEW OF THE FIRSTPASS PLATFORM

Published: 5th March 2023

The following video has been produced for Bolton College's Digifest presentation
about the FirstPass platform. The video sequence shows a subject topic
classifier being added to a large and growing collection of other classifiers.
Once a subject topic classifier has been trained and tested it can be used by
teachers in different settings to support the delivery of open-ended questions.




AN ABUNDANCE OF TEXT

Published: 29th December 2022

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In a previous article I described the reasons for establishing a national text
labelling and annotation platform for the education sector. The basic premise
for the idea is a simple one. Firstly, establish a national text labelling and
annotation platform for the education sector, whose capabilities expand over a
period of time. Secondly, build a corpus of labelled and annotated text that is
specific to the education sector and to all points on the student life cycle.
And thirdly, use this large body of text to create AIED products and services to
meet the needs of students, teachers, campus support teams and other
stakeholders within the education sector. All of these endeavours will be
underpinned by appropriate ethical and governance arrangements, and a
sustainable business model.




TRAINING SUBJECT TOPIC CLASSIFIERS

Published: 27th October 2022

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It's October 2022 and subject specialist teachers and data labellers in various
education settings have started to set up and train subject topic classifiers on
Bolton College's FirstPass platform. Once trained and tested the classifiers
will be used to support the computer mediation of open-ended questions as part
of formative assessment practices at Bolton College and in other further
education colleges within the UK. This brief article details how subject topic
classifiers are set up and trained within FirstPass.




DATA LABELLERS WITHIN THE EDUCATION SECTOR

Published: 20th September 2022

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The data labelling role is common in industries such as finance, insurance,
mapping and medicine. These roles support the classification of financial
information, insurance claims, buildings, vehicles, medical records, clinical
images and more. However, within the education sector data labelling roles are
not yet prevalent. In this article I focus on data labelling roles that support
text labelling and text annotation within the education sector. Please note that
there are concerns regarding the labelling of education datasets that pertain to
postal codes, gender, race, age, learning support needs, facial images or
emotions and I have expressed those in an earlier article.




THE RATIONALE FOR ESTABLISHING A NATIONAL TEXT LABELLING AND ANNOTATION SERVICE
FOR THE EDUCATION SECTOR

Published: 4th September 2022

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A large number of opportunities arise if a national text labelling and
annotation service is established for the education sector. It can be used to
address a wide range of problems that are encountered by individuals and
institutions who operate within the field. In this short article I explore the
rationale for such a service.




A NATIONAL TEXT ANNOTATION AND DATA LABELLING PLATFORM FOR THE EDUCATION SECTOR

Published: 21st Aug 2022

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Schools, colleges and universities generate, process and store large
repositories of text. This brief article explores the opportunities that arise
when this large trove of text is organised, labelled and then made available to
the wider sector. I will describe three use cases that emerge from a text
annotation or labelling service; such as Bolton College's FirstPass platform and
the affordances that these may bring to the wider education sector. And lastly,
I will present a case for establishing a national data labelling and text
annotation service for the education sector.




CALLS FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

Published: 24th May 2022

Would you like to shape the development of a new AI service that supports
students and teachers with the formative assessment of open-ended questions?
Sign up to Bolton College's FirstPass pilot: http://bit.ly/3vJrxvX




FIRSTPASS - TRAINING SUBJECT TOPIC CLASSIFIERS

By Aftab Hussain on 25th October 2021

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The ability to crowdsource the training of subject topic classifiers in Bolton
College's FirstPass platform is particularly interesting. The platform is
designed so that teachers in schools, colleges and universities in the UK and
elsewhere have the opportunity to contribute labelled sentences for their
subject topics. We hope to observe exponential growth in training data when
student responses to open-ended questions are used to train the subject topic
classifiers.




UNESCO REPORT REFERENCES BOLTON COLLEGE'S ADA SERVICE

By Aftab Hussain on 9th April 2021

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Colleagues at Bolton College are delighted to see the Ada service being
referenced by UNESCO in a recent report entitled AI and Education - Guidance for
policy makers.




BOLTON COLLEGE MAKES THE EDTECH50 2020 YEARBOOK

By Aftab Hussain on 1st March 2020

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Delighted to see Bolton College referenced in this year's EdTech50 2020 yearbook
for its continued work on Ada, its campus digital assistant; and for FirstPass,
a service that seeks to support the formative assessment of open-ended
questions.




BOLTON COLLEGE PUBLISHES ITS IOS APP FOR ITS ADA SERVICE

By Aftab Hussain on 2nd July 2019

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Bolton College has published an iOS app for its Ada service. The app has been
designed to enable students to ask Ada about College services and their studies.
Teachers and support teams can also use the app to support their work. Ada
returns verbal, textual or multi-media feedback to students, teachers and
support teams who make use of the service. The iOS app complements the College's
Android and Alexa apps for the Ada service.




BOLTON COLLEGE PUBLISHES AN ANDROID APP FOR ITS ADA SERVICE

By Aftab Hussain on 8 March 2019

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Bolton College has published an Android app for its Ada service. In its present
state, the app enables a student or an employee of the College to pose a
question to Ada (the College's digital assistant) and she returns a verbal,
textual or multi-media response back to the person making the enquiry.



In its next iteration, the app will offer nudges to students. These nudges will
offer information, advice and guidance on a wide variety of topics and College
services. For instance, a nudge could offer information about a forthcoming
hand-in-date for an assignment and it could also advise the student about the
grade required for that assignment if the average grade profile is to be
maintained or increased.

The app marks a significant milestone for the College because it offers
immediacy to every student, teacher and support team at the College. But more
so, it presents the College with a wonderful opportunity to give everyone on the
campus access to a personal digital assistant to support their studies or work.


BOLTON COLLEGE IS AWARDED AN AOC BEACON AWARD

By Aftab Hussain on 22 March 2019

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I am pleased to announce that Bolton College was awarded the Association of
Colleges' Beacon Award for education technology on the 22nd of March 2019. The
award was given for the College's work on its campus chatbot and digital
assistant, Ada.



Commentary from the Association of Colleges
The Beacon assessors felt that Bolton College’s initiative use of chatbot
technology was “potentially a game changer for the whole of the FE sector”. Ada
is described as the college’s very own answer to Amazon’s Alexa: a digital
assistant providing personalised and contextualised one-to-one support for every
student on the campus. Powered by artificial intelligence, Ada functions as a
virtual support teacher on behalf of teachers and support teams across the
campus. The service has so far responded successfully to more than 70,000
questions from learners. It has allowed them to garner information, advice and
guidance to support their studies, even out of office hours. Members of Bolton
College’s information learning technology team championed the use of this
technology, as a growing volume of data led them to conclude that a service
which enabled students to garner information in a more intuitive and accessible
manner was essential. The AI platform has been taught to support everything from
the delivery of GCSE maths and hairdressing courses to the college’s
employability curriculum. The team behind the programme said these functions
will continue to expand and grow. Bolton College’s chatbot service is already
available to all learners at the college. This year, the college will launch iOS
and Android apps for the chatbot service. The college is also publishing an
Amazon Alexa app which will enable learners to access college services via their
smart speakers. The assessors said that “the long-term benefits for the quality
of the learner experience and potential organisational efficiencies were highly
impressive”.


DAMIAN HINDS, ENGLAND'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION REFERENCES BOLTON
COLLEGE'S ADA SERVICE AT BETT 2019

By Aftab Hussain on 25 January 2019

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Bolton College is honoured to be referenced by Damian Hinds, England's Secretary
of State for Education, for its work on campus chatbots and digital assistants
at this year's BETT Show (4mins 25secs). Ada, Bolton College's digital assistant
has been responding to student questions since April 2017.




BOLTON COLLEGE IS SHORTLISTED FOR AOC BEACON AWARD

By Aftab Hussain on 21 November 2018

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Bolton College has been announced as a finalist for this year’s Effective use of
Technology in Further Education Award from the Association of Colleges. The
College has been shortlisted for its work on Ada, the campus chatbot for
students, teachers and support teams. The chatbot has been supporting students
since it was launched in April 2017. The awards ceremony will be held on Friday
22nd March 2019 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.




VOICE FIRST EDTECH SERVICES

By Aftab Hussain on 29 September 2018

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Voice First offer schools, colleges and universities an exciting opportunity to
deliver their services through ambient devices such as Amazon's Echo smart
speakers. When students are able to authenticate to these devices they can
illicit information that is personalised and contextualised to them. Imagine a
student at home who turns towards her echo device and asks about this morning's
schedule of classes; the date, time and location of a forthcoming exam or she
may use the service to send a message to one of her tutors.




WEB CHAT WITH ADA

By Aftab Hussain on 26th May 2018

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The ILT Team at Bolton College is exploring the use of a floating web chat
window for the College's Ada service. The team envisages that the new interface
will sit on top of multiple services such as Moodle, the College's learning
management system; the institution's student and staff home pages and the work
experience and social action apps that are currently in development.

At a simple level the web chat window will enable students and colleagues to ask
Ada questions regarding the web site that they are engaged with. For instance,
if a student needs to ask a question about any element of the College's work
experience app he or she just needs to open up the web chat window and ask Ada a
question. Here is a short demo of the Ada web chat window (there is no sound).



As the Ada service develops students and colleagues will be able to carry out
various day-to-day tasks that are associated with other College web based
services within the Ada web chat window without opening the website or app
associated with that particular task.


ADA IOS DEMO AND OVERVIEW

By Aftab Hussain on 22nd April 2018

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Here is a short demo and overview of Bolton College's Ada iOS app.




THE USE OF COGNITIVE SERVICES IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR

By Aftab Hussain on 9th April 2018

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If you started your vocation within the education sector some 30 years or more
ago you will recall how the the World Wide Web steadily touched and transformed
every service that your school, college or university provided. For instance,
the language of the World Wide Web enabled the widespread adoption of learning
management systems which transformed the design, delivery and management of
teaching, learning and assessment across the education sector. Likewise, the
language of cognitive services will bring about changes; but these changes are
likely to be much more profound; touching and irrevocably reshaping every facet
of the education sector. For example, how will teaching, learning and assessment
be affected once we introduce another active agent into the setting; especially
when teachers and institutions are increasingly managed by algorithms to support
the student's journey through their studies?

This article explores three broad questions relating to the use of cognitive
services by schools, colleges and universities; namely:

 1. How will institutions design, manage and deliver services to their
    respective communities if they leveraged the capabilities of machine
    learning or cognitive platforms?
 2. What additional value can be derived from the use of cognitive services?
 3. What should we be wary of when using cognitive services?


PROMOTIONAL VIDEO ON THE ADA SERVICE FOR STUDENTS

By Aftab Hussain on 2nd March 2018

The following promotional video highlights some of the services that can be
delivered to students through Bolton College's Ada service.




NEXT GENERATION DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

By Aftab Hussain on 27th February 2018

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Bolton College's work on learning analytics, adaptive learning, chatbots and
cognitive services is showcased in the Next Generation Digital Learning
Environments report by Jisc. The report examines the growing role of data and
analytics in driving the development of adaptive learning, chatbots and
cognitive assistants within the education sector.




CONVERSATIONS WITH ADA AND THINKING MACHINES

By Aftab Hussain on 25th February 2018

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Student engagement with Bolton College's Ada service is now well established.
The response from students and colleagues on the campus has been overwhelmingly
positive. Since its inception the goal of the Ada service has been to develop a
platform that enables students to find answers to their day-to-day questions
regarding their studies and life on the campus. It is a bold endeavour because
it means that the College is attempting to teach Ada how to think like a
student, a teacher and as a member of the student support team. For example,
there are times when the service needs to respond to student enquiries even
before they are asked. It needs to know the types of questions and enquiries
that will be posed by students at every stage in the student life cycle. And
when providing information, advice, guidance, support and encouragement; the Ada
service needs to think and respond as a teacher, librarian, careers advisor,
mentor and as a tutor.




BOLTON COLLEGE AT DIGIFEST 2018

By Aftab Hussain on 4th February 2018

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I am looking forward to being on the ‘Next Generation Digital Learning
Environments: Community Voices’ panel at Digifest on the 6th of March 2018. It
will be an opportunity to share Bolton College's use of adaptive learning and
how it has used Ada, the conversational service for students, teachers and
support teams.




BOLTON COLLEGE IS SHORTLISTED FOR A TES FE AWARD FOR TECHNOLOGY

By Aftab Hussain on 15th December 2017

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Bolton College's ILT Team is pleased to announce that it has been shortlisted
for the 'outstanding use of technology for improving teaching, learning and
assessment' in the forthcoming TES FE Awards ceremony which will be held in
February 2018. The ILT Team has been shortlisted for its work on Ada, the
College's cognitive assistant for students, teachers and support teams.




BOLTON COLLEGE'S ONLINE WORK EXPERIENCE SYSTEM

By Aftab Hussain on 8th December 2017

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Bolton College's ILT Team is pleased to announce that it is working with
colleagues to develop a new online system to suppport students when they embark
on a work experience programme. The service will leverage learning analytics and
Ada, the College's cognitive assistant for students, teachers and support teams.


ONLINE CONVERSATIONAL TUTORIALS

By Aftab Hussain on 29th October 2017

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The use of IBM's Watson Conversation Service has enabled the teachers, systems
developers and learning technologists at Bolton College to offer tailoured and
personalised online conversational tutorials to thousands of students across the
campus. The ability to use natural language processing, natural language
generation and learning analytics at scale has been warmly welcomed by the
College's Information Learning Technology team.


ENGAGE, DISCOVER AND RESOLVE

By Aftab Hussain on 3rd September 2017

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Cognitive services were introduced to Bolton College to fulfill a simple desire
to improve business performance and to further enhance the services that are
used by its students around the campus. The underlying premise for using
cognitive services stems from a problem that is encountered by schools, colleges
and universities of all sizes; namely around the availability and the management
of very large amounts of data. You would expect that a large volume of data
helps educational institutions to better understand complex situations and by de
facto enables them to deliver improved services to their students and employees.
However, more data often leads to more confusion. We make too many decisions
with irrelevant or incorrect information, or with data that represents only part
of the picture. The situation is made ever more complex when we come across the
oceans of unstructured data were value has yet to be extracted in an education
setting. The solution is to use a generation of new tools or cognitive
technologies that help us to penetrate complexity and comprehend the world
around us. The goal is to transform and simplify the way we get things done
(Smart Machines by John Kelly and Steve Hamm - 2013). For Bolton College, it's
cognitive assistant for students, teachers and support teams Ada, is part of the
solution.

Cognitive services deliver three major value propositions that make them so
compelling for the education sector. The first benefit presents an improved
paradigm for engaging and interacting with day-to-day services and systems; were
students, teachers and support teams use conversation to access information and
services that are pertinent to their needs and requirements. The second benefit
enables individuals to discover insights that would have been difficult or
virtually impossible to envisage without the use of cognitive services. The
third benefit enables students and colleagues to make better decisions.
Cognitive services are being tasked with making an increasing number decisions
to support students, teachers and support teams and it is happening with more
frequency.




ADA IS SHOWCASED BY THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOUNDATION

By Aftab Hussain on 18th August 2017

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Ada, Bolton College's cognitive assistant for students, teachers and support
teams was recently showcased by the Education and Training Foundation for the
way the service was used to support teaching and learning in a maths project
that was sponsored by The Learning Consortium.

"This pioneering work into supporting learners to develop their maths skills
through Artificial Intelligence is truly remarkable. The more a learner uses the
system, the more the system literally learns about each individual's needs and
supplies relevant material. What is really impressive is the way the College has
been able to involve teachers, the technical team and learners to develop this
amazing service." Markos Tiris, Executive Director of The Learning Consortium.


COGNITIVE COMPUTING AND THE EDUCATION SECTOR

By Aftab Hussain on 14th August 2017

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How would students enquire, explore, learn and be assessed ... and how would
teachers prepare, deliver, assess and administer their courses ... and how would
support teams and administrators carry out their work to support the needs of
students if they all had access to a personal cognitive assistant or if the
software applications that they all used took advantage of cognitive computing?
I ask these questions because the answers or solutions that arise from the use
of cognitive computing are set to transform the way schools, colleges and
universities deliver education services to their local and distributed
communities.


BOLTON COLLEGE JOINS IBM'S WITH WATSON APP PROGRAM

By Aftab Hussain on 11th August 2017

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Bolton College has successfully completed its application to join IBM's With
Watson App program. The With Watson App programme is an application verification
program designed to provide exclusive brand, business, and technology resources
to developers and organisations that are embedding Watson technologies into
their services. Programme members also support the desire not to displace
employees when AI services are introduced to their companies or organisations.
The With Watson program has enabled Bolton College to verify and validate its
Ask Ada service; an online cognitive assistant for students, teachers and
support teams. The Ask Ada service takes advantage of IBM's Watson cognitive
platform; which enables the College to use the company's natural language
processing technology. Entry to the With Watson App program allows Bolton
College to use the With Watson branding as part of the Ask Ada service.




ADA FINDS HER VOICE

By Aftab Hussain on 23rd June 2017

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Ada is representative of a new breed of conversational services that are about
to enter the education sector. Their introduction will not only augment and
enhance the capabilities of many online services that are found in schools,
colleges and universities such as learning management systems, library
management systems and information management systems; but they will deliver
considerable value to the students, teachers and support teams who will come to
rely on them. Conversational services such as Bolton College's Ada have various
facets. These are listed below:

 * they act as Oracles - enabling students, teachers and support teams to gather
   information and insights from around the campus;
 * they act as bridges that connect multiple services around the campus together
   - enabling improved access to information and services for everyone on the
   campus; and
 * they act as agents or digital assistants - providing timely advice, guidance,
   insights and assistance to everyone on the campus. As digital assistants they
   undertake numerous jobs and tasks on behalf of individuals and teams to
   support the student body.




IBM WATSON CONVERSATION TEAM VISIT BOLTON COLLEGE

By Aftab Hussain on 7th June 2017

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Members of the IBM Watson Conversation Team visited Bolton College to view Ada -
Bolton College's digital assistant for students, teachers and support teams.
Students from the College's second year HND Computing programme have been
involved in teaching Ada how to respond to questions from fellow students. The
project has given them the opportunity to explore natural language processing
and the world of digital assistants.




THE STUDENT REPORT CARD - REDEFINED

By Aftab Hussain on 29th May 2017

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The advent of natural language processing and natural language generation
services within the education sector is set to address a number of everyday
problems and challenges that are encountered by teachers, support teams and
administrators in schools, colleges and universities. In this short article I
would like to examine how these services will support the production and
distribution of the online student report card.


ADA PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

By Aftab Hussain on 25th May 2017

This is a short promotional video that we shared with colleagues to raise
awareness of Ada, Bolton College's digital assistant for learners, teachers and
support teams.




ADA IN THE CLASSROOM

By Aftab Hussain on 14th May 2017

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One of the most interesting aspects about developing a digital assistant for
students and teachers has been the potential for the service to support and
enhance teaching, learning and assessment. The learning technology team at
Bolton College has conducted research to enable the delivery of the following
services through Ada:

 * the ability to deliver personalised, contextualised, differentiated and
   adaptive learning and assessment materials to each student;
 * the ability to utilise particular elements of the student dataset to deliver
   personalised learning to each student. Ada's responses to student questions
   can be informed by multiple variables such as the academic level of the
   student, the current performance of the student on the course, student
   assessment data, the vocational setting of the student, the goals and targets
   associated with each student and more.

This represents a significant milestone for the ILT team because it means that
teachers across Bolton College can offer differentiated and adaptive teaching,
learning and assessment materials to the student via Ada as well as Moodle, the
College's virtual learning environment.


FROM ORACLE TO AGENT

By Aftab Hussain on 18th April 2017

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If we regard schools, colleges and universities as institutions that process
information, the management of data represents the first step in many that
enables these institutions to deliver education services to their local and
wider communities. They start by distilling data into information, information
into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom, and wisdom into actions. However, as the
volume of data rises within a school, college or university it becomes
increasingly difficult for teachers, student support teams and admin teams to
convert data into information, knowledge, wisdom and actions which enable them
to support the myriad of students in their respective institutions. In this
short article I would like to detail the use of oracles and machine learning
agents which could help schools, colleges and universities to capitalise on
student data.


ADA GOES LIVE AT BOLTON COLLEGE

By Aftab Hussain on 7th April 2017

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Bolton College's ILT Team is pleased to announce that Ada, the College's digital
assistant for students went live on the 6th of April. Ada has been taught to
answer general questions and enquiries about Bolton College and she is able to
answer specific questions relating to the student who is making the enquiry.

The service marks a significant milestone in the way students at Bolton College
will come to engage with College services.




ASK ADA

By Aftab Hussain on 29th January 2017

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The College's ILT Team is examining how Ada could support teachers and students
in the classroom. As we converse with Ada we are discovering that her place in
the classroom presents colleagues at Bolton College with a number of exciting
opportunities to enhance teaching, learning and assessment.




ADA - BOLTON COLLEGE'S LATEST DIGITAL ASSISTANT

By Aftab Hussain on 5th January 2017

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Introduction


The Information Learning Technology (ILT) Team at Bolton College has
successfully deployed a number of digital assistants to support the delivery of
learning and assessment materials to students. The use of these digital
assistants has enabled the personalisation of teaching, learning and assessment
at scale. Digital assistants can also be designed and deployed to enhance a
range of other services that are used by students and colleagues. One of the
projects that the College's ILT Team is currently working on involves the use of
a digital assistant called Ada who is being taught how to respond to a wide
range of student enquiries across multiple contexts.


DIGITAL ASSISTANTS IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR

By Aftab Hussain on 5th January 2017

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The use of machine learning within the education sector provides schools,
colleges and universities with multiple opportunities to enhance and transform
the heart of their services such as teaching, learning, assessment and student
support. This article seeks to expand on my previous notes on machine learning
by providing a number of user case scenarios for each of the machine learning
agents that could be employed by institutions on their personal learning
environments.


GETTING PERSONAL WITH MACHINE LEARNING

By Aftab Hussain on 20th November 2016

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Machine learning offers schools, colleges, universities and the companies who
provide digital services to the education sector with an opportunity to improve
personalised and contextualised learning to students. In this article I will
explore how machine learning can enhance the management of differentiated and
adaptive learning; and the management of the student life cycle. I will also
examine some of the challenges that arise from the use of machine learning.


DIFFERENTIATING CONTENT ACCORDING TO LEARNING SUPPORT NEED

By Aftab Hussain on 26th October 2016



The ILT Team at Bolton College can now offer differentiated learning and
assessment materials to students according to their learning support needs. In
one recent example colleagues in the Careers and Learning Support Teams worked
together to produce on an online tutorial which offered advice to students about
applying for jobs and preparing for a job interview. The teams wanted to produce
content that reflected the learning support need of the student viewing the
content.


LEARNING SUPPORT AGENTS

By Aftab Hussain on 23rd October 2016

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The use of agents is making personal learning environments smarter as they
advance the delivery of personalised and contextualised services to students. In
this article I identify a number of these agents and the roles that they play
within a personal learning environment.

Within the context of personal learning environments, agents can be described as
programs that observe student and teacher behaviour within the learning
environment. They carry out data mining activities which enable them to extract
meaning and knowledge from the large datasets that are to found in a modern
education setting. The agents then direct or combine their activities to satisfy
the needs of students, teachers and support teams.


BOLTON COLLEGE'S ADAPTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

By Aftab Hussain on 12th September 2016

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Introduction
This short article details the four constituent parts that make up Bolton
College's Adaptive Learning Environment.

 1. Moodle is Bolton College's Virtual Learning Environment. The research that
    the College's ILT Team has undertaken has enabled Moodle to deliver adaptive
    content and assessment activities to each student. The solution means that
    there is no need to purchase a license for a third party adaptive learning
    environment. We are planning to undertake additional research which will
    allow us to explore the delivery of adaptive content and assessment
    activities in other virtual learning environments.
 2. Adobe Captivate is the eLearning authoring tool which is used to create our
    adaptive online tutorials. Each tutorial includes a bespoke set of queries
    that are presented to our Digital Engine. The algorithms within each
    tutorial use the query results to deliver differentiated and adaptive
    content and assessment activities to each student.
 3. Student Datasets are made up of the College's core student dataset (Tribal
    EBS), the College's Learner Journey Management System and the student
    profile. At the present moment in time the ILT Team's adaptive learning
    project queries and analyses the data on its current student cohort. As the
    project progresses colleagues across Bolton College will data mine a much
    larger historical dataset which will deliver further improvements to our
    adaptive services.
 4. The Digital Engine reads, mines and applies updates to the wider student
    dataset. The present choice of name for the Digital Engine is deliberate
    because it reflects its current ability to behave and act autonomously. At
    the present moment in time the Digital Engine relies heavily on teachers and
    instructional designers to shape and inform its behaviour and the decisions
    that it makes. Over time, the Digital Engine will gradually evolve into a
    virtual machine which will have the ability to behave in a more autonomous
    fashion. That is to say that it will define, test and apply changes to its
    hypotheses in order to deliver improved adaptive tutorials and assessment
    activities to each student.


HOW WILL ADAPTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS EVOLVE?

By Aftab Hussain on 30th August 2016

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Adaptive learning environments are representative of a new breed of digital
services that have emerged within the education sector over the last decade.
They have come about because they take advantage of data and the technologies
that support data management. The growing use of machine learning and natural
language processing will further escalate the development and use of adaptive
learning environments within the education sector. The use of these new
artefacts will bring about many benefits to students, teachers and educational
leaders; but it must be noted that the introduction of adaptive learning
environments will also pose many challenges to all stakeholders within the
sector. This article seeks to explore (through various scenarios) the use of
adaptive learning environments, the benefits that can be derived from them and
the challenges that arise from their use.


START LEARNING

By Aftab Hussain on 24th August 2016



The ILT Team at Bolton College is currently researching how the College's
adaptive learning environment could be used to improve the delivery of online
tutorials and assessment activities to each of our students.


TARGET SETTING AND ADAPTIVE LEARNING

By Aftab Hussain on 16th August 2016



Bolton College's adaptive learning environment is proving to be very versatile.
One recent success has focused on the platform's ability to use target setting
information to differentiate content and assessment activities on Moodle, the
College's virtual learning environment. When a teacher and a student agree on a
learning target, the tutorial (or SCORM package) that is presented to the
student on Moodle reflects that new target.


THE ADAPTIVE LEARNING LANDSCAPE

By Aftab Hussain on 14th August 2016

The advent of the adaptive learning environment is a welcomed addition to the
distributive learning landscape because it provides teachers with additional
tools to deliver personalised and contextualised teaching, learning and
assessment activities to each of their students. The use of machine learning in
adaptive learning environments is the most significant development in
distributive learning because it marks the time when a new agent is introduced
into the classroom. That new agent is the adaptive learning environment which
quietly queries and analyses vast quantities of data before it autonomously
determines the tutorials and assessment activities to present to a given
student. Further progress has yet to be made before adaptive learning
environments become common place in our schools, colleges and universities; but
the progress that is currently being made with analytics, machine learning,
content creation, machine marking and natural language bodes well for the
future.


LEARNING PREFERENCES ON BOLTON COLLEGE'S ADAPTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

By Aftab Hussain on 7th August 2016



The ILT Team at Bolton College has recently updated the College's adaptive
learning environment so that content and assessment activities within an online
tutorial follow the learning preferences of students.


ADAPTIVE LEARNING - OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

By Aftab Hussain on 28th July 2016

  

In this short article I would like to take the opportunity to explore some of
the opportunities and challenges facing the education sector with the emergence
of the adaptive learning environment.

At the present moment in time adaptive learning environments take advantage of
supervised machine learning techniques to deliver content and assessment
activities that are personalised and contextualised to meet the needs of each
student. In supervised machine learning teachers define the desired set of
outcomes that are expected from an adaptive online tutorial and they also
provide regular feedback to the adaptive learning environment which enables it
to adjust the paths that it takes to reach a teacher's desired outcomes.





content




ARTICLES

Campus Chatbots
The future is local and communal for Bolton College's Ada service
An abundance of Text
Training Subject Topic Classifiers
Data Labellers within the education sector
Data Labellers within the education sector
The rationale for establishing a national text labelling and annotation service
for the education sector
5 reasons for establishing a national text labelling and annotation platform for
the education sector
A national text annotation and data labelling platform for the education sector
FirstPass - Training Subject Topic Classifiers
Communal Spirit
FirstPass - Use Cases
FirstPass - Discover more with open-ended questions
Experiments in Adaptive Learning
Ask Ada about subject topics
Digital Assistants and Informed Decision Making
A Digital Assistant for every student and teacher (updated)
Can computers help teachers assess open-ended questions?
Cognitive Tasks
Campus Digital Assistants - a new EdTech Category
The characteristics of a campus digital assistant
A Digital Assistant for every student and teacher
From campus chatbot to digital assistant
Why is context important for a digital assistant?
Digital Assistants for Teachers
The Chatbot Proliferation Problem
Making the complex simple
Voice First EdTech Services
Campus Chatbots and Modalities
Context and Campus Chatbots
5 use cases for a campus chatbot
Introducing a chatbot to your LMS
Voice First Services on the Campus
The evolution of the campus chatbot
Ubiquitous Campus Chatbots
Embedding prior knowledge into your campus bots
Managed by Algorithms
The Use of Cognitive Services in the Education Sector
Bots on the Campus
Conversations with Ada and Thinking Machines
Talking Data
Conversations with a Chatbot
Online Conversational Tutorials
Cognitive Computing and the Education Sector
Ada Finds Her Voice
Student Report Cards - Redefined
Ada in the Classroom
From Oracle to Agent
Ada goes live at Bolton College
Ask Ada
Ada - Bolton College's Latest Digital Assistant
Digital Assistants in the Education Sector
Getting Personal with Machine Learning
Learning Support Agents
Bolton College's Adaptive Learning Environment
How will Adaptive Learning Environments Evolve?
The Adaptive Learning Landscape
Adaptive Learning: Opportunities & Challenges
Learning Analytics: Opportunities & Challenges
Learning Analytics
Segmented Services
Social Learning
Let's Create, Share and Play
Cloud Services
Technological Dependence
Calm Technology
The Future of the eBook
Ambient Schools
Mirrored Classrooms
Lessons from the Past
Technology and the Self
Creative Skillset
A New Digital Identity for Schools
Adopting New Technologies
Future Identities
Next Gen EdTech Companies
A Cyberpunk Future for Schools
Digital Advtange






Transforming education with ILT