The outcomes of the WeLearn@Scale project can have a significant impact on European excellence and competitiveness, as they offer a novel and concrete way to design and implement feedback practices that can enhance the overall quality of learning in higher education. The Synergy platform can be used also in graduate programs to facilitate feedback interactions with peers and instructors to improve any academic work (e.g. reports, draft manuscript). That is, the applicability of the project outcomes can be easily extended beyond the undergraduate education toward graduate programs to improve Masters’ or PhD students’ learning experiences while conducting advanced studies. Thus, the proposals of this project can create a broader impact on the quality of higher education programs, which can help increase the workforce readiness of the graduates, creating a bigger value for the economy and society in Europe.
The WeLearn@Scale project also has opened a number of new avenues of research, which are already being explored in follow-up projects and proposals (e.g. ERC Starting Grant), including: a) the application of gamification in the design of Synergy to promote student engagement in peer feedback; b) integration of AI technologies into Synergy to augment students’ capacities in transitioning from feedback to action; c) the use of more advanced learning analytics technologies to assist instructors in intervening the feedback activity; and d) the use of more advance techniques (e.g. eye-tracking) to build optimal interfaces for facilitating feedback processes in Synergy and for designing learning analytics support. These research ideas can innovate the higher education in Europe and create the impact of universities in the society and economy. In a collaboration with a Taiwanese researcher, a research grant was already achieved from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education to gamify the Synergy platform and measure the impact of the gamification.
Finally, the WeLearn@Scale project has significantly contributed to the career of the fellow towards being an independent academic. During the project, the fellow had numerous opportunities to gain and practice technical skills (web programming, machine learning), research skills (academic writing), management skills, transversal skills such as writing and oral communication, as well as proposal writing, student advising, and teaching. The experience and the knowledge gained by the fellow has boosted the résumé of the fellow not only in terms of the scientific productivity but also by the prestige that Marie Curie Actions have in the international research scene.
