academe ®

academe® common ground

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With academe the entire Swiss university landscape can be intellectually active, on a cooperative and location-independent basis. academe offers learning and test flashcards for studying university subject matter, which are primarily compiled by students. These flashcards can be called up on smart-phones or via a web interface. They are free of charge and contain no advertising.

The main innovation is not the provision of learning and test flashcards as such, but the contents, which are created and made available by students at Swiss universities. Students can enhance the quality of the cards by providing mutual feedback and quality assessments. In this way, a dynamic ques-tion pool is developed that can be readily retrieved by students via their AAI access (SWITCHtool-box). The second innovation is the openness of the system architecture, which means that academe can be readily linked to other systems via interfaces.

academe will undoubtedly motivate students to work together with each other, such as through the option of marking cards as favourites, rating them as excellent or criticising them. This serves to in-crease the quality of the cards, because together we are wiser. A crowd works more accurately than certain individuals in isolation – a phenomenon which is also evident in the animal world. This collec-tive intelligence will be inherent in academe, promoting a new culture of learning.

A further attractive aspect of academe is the link it provides between different universities and the resultant openness. Individual cards can, and ought to be swapped for each other, and it is possible to collect useful cards in personalised card collections. The heterogeneous nature of the subject matter becomes clear, and new facts can be linked together. Explorative learners can move forward into pre-viously unknown areas. The focus is on the contents. It would thus be possible to refer to academe as “crowd-sourcing for the crowd”. academe is a straightforward knowledge-imparting tool for teach-ers and students that is fun to use!

academe promotes two fundamental cooperative processes. On the one hand, cards can be com-piled on an altruistic basis for others to use as well and, on the other hand, students can work to-gether on a joint basis. A shared benefit results. People are naturally disposed to cooperate, to ex-change information and tasks, and to share their aims. These capabilities have led to impressive results and successes in the past, ranging from the use of tools right through to the development of math-ematics and the use of symbols (M. Tomasello 2009. Why We Cooperate. Mit Press).

The sharing of information takes place on a voluntary basis and is steered by empathy. This phenom-enon is evident in small children already. It is not by means of rewards that children are motivated to help. In the same way, the incentive for students is not a financial one but fun-based and socially-mined learning with their friends, and the assistance provided for successfully passing their examition.

academe® common ground

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academe® mobileacademe can be used by university students and teachers for creating and working with flashcards as well as for sharing them with their fellow students. academe has been designed in cooperation with universi-ties and students. It is an optimized form of learning and retaining new information. By sharing with oth-ers, students can be saved from having to create their own sets of flashcards. academe enriches learning, teaching and campus life not only for students but also for individual faculties and the wider community. It enables teacher to engage more students in exciting new ways, reaching them on their terms and via their devices, and keeping students both informed and involved. The content is accessible independently of the student’s location. Constant improvement of the innovative technology helps to ensure a better education experience. We are looking forward to keeping abreast of the changing styles of learning.

Please note that all features marked with an asterisk are planned for forthcoming versions of academe.

ACADEME MOBILE MAIN FEATURES:

» learning and test cards on a variety of mobile devices including iPhone OSOK and Android*.

» scalable architecture for n-LMS integration via web services

» offline studying mode

» search function, personal notes and statistics*

» quality assurance through review process, cognitive level assignment, voting and feedback

» multilingualism

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academe® mobile

Figure 1: academe v0.5 on iPhone

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academe® webacademe web is a tool for the creation and administration of flashcards. A simple text editor not only per-mits the use of different character sets but also allows the integration of mathematical formula. The repro-duction of images, audio and film is guaranteed. In addition to mobile learning, students can learn and test themselves online. Statistics show the progress made on learning. For those who still prefer non-digitized flashcards, different templates are provided for printing the cards. Group and share management is based on the SWITCHaai authentication and authorization infrastructure - the key that connects students and uni-versities throughout Switzerland.

ACADEME WEB:

» access SWITCHaai

» editor for learning and test card creation and administration

» media upload (image, audio*, video*)

» cognitive level assignment

» review management (peer review, profproofed)

» import and export of flashcards*

» study history

» statistics*

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academe® web

Figure 2: academe web with AAI Login

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academe® learn

academe learn provides students with a more interactive and collaborative education experience, resulting in a deeper engagement.

ACADEME LEARN:

» traditional flashcard as per the Leitner Method

» “profproof” or “review” function for quality assurance

» rehearsal and reset function

» history of mastered cards

» feedback, hint, bookmark, personal notes

» search function

» create and edit cards

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academe® learn

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Figure 3: Ingrid and Matthias

academe® test

academe test is a special feature for multiple choice questions. It allows up to five correct answers. Learners will appreciate the fact that it resembles their MC exams and that the solution is displayed immediately. The MC cards that have been answered are saved as long as they are not consciously reset. A score notification helps monitor the learner’s progress.

ACADEME TEST:

» multiple-choice questions

» “profproof” or “review” function for quality assurance

» rehearsal and reset function

» history of mastered cards

» score notification

» cognitive level information

» feedback, hint, bookmark, personal notes

» search function

» create and edit cards

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academe® test

Figure 4: Orlando

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academe® settings

Individual preferences, such as the activation of auto-shuffle mode, the language choice or the visual appearance of the application are adjustable. For offline learning, card packages can be easily down-loaded via Wi-Fi. All these functions make academe a personal learning companion that is inde-pendent of one’s location.

ACADEME SETTINGS:

» auto-shuffle on/off*

» language settings*

» group management*

» statistics*, study history*

» offline studying modus

» sync card function over Wi-Fi

» appearance*

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academe® menu

Figure 5: Menu overview

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academe® collaborate

The challenge of academe collaborate is to provide learners with a more interactive and collabra-tive education experience when working with the academe flashcards. academe thus comes under the most popular application category - the social networking-related applications. We want to tie academe into a wider solution, since, together, we can create a meaningful application. Winning applications have to be sufficiently unique. We can attain this goal through the uniqueness of Switzer-land’s university network.

ACADEME COLLABORATE:

» card sharing

» feedback

» ...

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academe® collaborate

UNIBS

ETHZ

UNISG

UNIBE

UNIFR

UNI LAUSANNE

EPF

UNINE

UNIGENÈVE

UZH

Figure 6: Collaboration between universities

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academe® connect

academe connect gives your institution the ability to send targeted messages to recipients and members of your community.

ACADEME CONNECT:

» distribution of relevant information to students or a wider community*

» push notification*

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academe® analytics

academe analytics makes it possible to improve institutional performance by transforming data into a meaningful information.

ACADEME ANALYTICS:

» report and analytics*

» enrolment management

» tracking student success*

» framework to fit your unique needs

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academe® system architecture

academe’s system architecture is scalable and its strengths are web services which allow n-LMS integra-tion no matter what kind of standard and specification you use. The application runs on a variety of mobile devices including iPhone OS and Android.

ACADEME SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE:

» connection to a variety of mobile devices including iPhone OSOK and Android*

» scalable architecture for n-LMS integration via web services

» relational database

» ...

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academe® system architecture

Figure 7: Scalable system architecture

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application-server

e.g. app-store

autorenreviewer

studentslectors

binary via webservices

over https

TCP/IPTCP/IP, httpAAI-authentication

databaseMySQL

webbrowser mobile-devices

J2EE(JBOSS)

ILIAS

OLAT

MOODLE

e.g. googleandroid

WEB

SERV

ICES

Available on the

App StoreAvailable on the

Android Market

LMSintegrationn

academe® hosting

A redundant infrastructure and two service levels for support ensure the availability of your learning envi-ronment 24/7 with a five-hour inspection window every week. Maximum downtime: 1 week.

ACADEME HOSTING:

» top-tier datacenters and redundant infrastructure*

» two levels of service*

» SLA*

» scalability

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academe® contact

If you have any questions or suggestions please, do not hesitate to contact us. We are looking forward to improving academe with help of your assistance.

ACADEME CONTACT:

» Karin Niffeler, UZH, karin.niffeler@biol.uzh.ch

» Marc Sohrmann, UNIL, marc.sohrmann@unil.ch

» Sarah Frédérickx, ETHZ, sarah.frederickx@hest.ethz.ch

» Piero Altomare, addoit GmbH, piero.altomare@addoit.com

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academe® nomenclature

Plato purchased the olive grove that belonged to the Attic hero, Akademos, in the north-west of

Athens, and began to give lessons in philosophy and the natural sciences. In the course of time, the

school took on the name of the olive grove, and the students began to call themselves academics.

» origin late 16th century: from Latin academia, reinforced by Greek Akademos

» the academic environment, community, or world | the groves of academe