Recommender Tool

Feature Summary & Requirements

The Recommender tool is a peer-to-peer learning tool that enables learners to share links to useful resources, and vote for them in order to create a scored and ordered list of resources according to their popularity with other learners. Functionally, this effectively creates a smaller version of a social media site such as Reddit, where resources are shared between users, and voted to the top or bottom of the list.

Open

The example above from the repository readme shows the XBlock in action. At the top is a list of resources, ordered by votes given by users. On the right hand side are options available to the posting user, and staff, allowing them to moderate entries.

Below this is a short description of the resource, provided by the learner, followed by the resource itself (presumably iframed in, this functionality did not exist previously and I am unable to test the tool directly due to its issues in Palm).

According to the XBlock’s documentation:

In a randomized control trial in a computer science course, this XBlock led to similar learning outcomes in about 10% less time than without it (so efficiency of learning was about 10% better than without the XBlock – students learned the same in less time). Qualitative analysis as well as quantitative analysis of usage data showed it was helpful in contexts where there were complex, multiconcept problems. It was not helpful or used in contexts where there were simple, single-step problems.

In an analysis comparing to other remediation systems within edX, it was more effective for deeper, more complex misconceptions, and less effective for simple errors.

While the XBlock itself has numerous issues and is in desperate need of reconstruction, the concept it enables appears to be an effective one for collaborative learning.