 Hi everyone, my name is Sonya Trivedi, communications major at Moodle and we are at day one of Moodle Mood Global 2023. Today I have with me Frederick Dixon, who is co-founder of Big Blow Button Moodle Certified Integration. Hi Fred, nice to see you today, thank you for joining me. My pleasure Sonya. Today you had a great presentation that I attended and it was on how AI and analytics are shaping the future of virtual classrooms and Big Blow Button. And I'm curious to ask you a few questions about it. To start with, can you tell me more how AI can assist educators in creating more opportunities for applied learning? So I think the key word there is assist and also applied learning. So if we think about how our brains work, they haven't changed in the last, you know, 60,000 years. AI shouldn't replace what we're doing and if we look at how we actually learn, it's like plier cells, we struggle a bit, it's how our brain chemistry rewires. Anything that can enhance that opportunity to have that struggle and struggle is good, then you have more learning. And this is the part I think that AI is trying to say, look, you can learn without struggling. No, that's just not how our brains work, right? So think of a soccer coach, right? And they want to hone the team and get them to be better. You don't bring the team on the field and just listen. You get them to practice and play and apply themselves and the teacher is like seeing how the players are doing. Now the teacher may have a strategy. There may be like nutritional coaches. There may be like motivational coaches. You may be able to like film the players and give them feedback. But all this is really just wrapping around making sure the players are making the most effective use of time on the field as they apply themselves. That's the same thing that should go on in a virtual class. AI should support the teacher in creating that playing field. It should support the students in terms of like being there in the best moment and applying themselves in the most efficient way. But you'd never get away from the teacher present to motivate and encourage students. And you never want to get away from students actually having to sit down and think about what's going on and not have the AI do it for them. If we get to that place, we're going the wrong place. Absolutely. I agree with you. One thing that I remember from your presentation is that you shared the framework for creating effective virtual classroom. Could you please elaborate a bit more on that? Just a few highlights maybe? Right. So it's complex, right? So if I said, hey, what would be, how would you deliver an effective virtual class? People may think, well, I'll just do what I did in the physical class. And no, I mean, to use the soccer analogy would be like, how would I broadcast a soccer game? You don't put a camera down in a chair and just say, hey, let me replicate your experience in a soccer game. It's amazing experience watching online. So what the teachers should do or what the AI should do is help the teachers and the way we do it is by a framework. So think about what is an effective virtual class. It's not very complex. But at the beginning you want to have some time at the beginning to build relationships up between students. Why is that important? Because you need to be able to make mistakes. Learning, making mistakes is an important part of learning. In fact, I would argue the best time is learning is when you've made a mistake, right? The cognitive dissonance. Like you start questioning yourself, like why is this not working? And then your brain kicks into a higher order and then you really start to think because our brains are lazy, right? But if you kick it in a higher order, then the learning is going to occur. The next bit would be, okay, if you've got some activity where the students feel comfortable with each other, maybe they're moving the mouse around, they're asking them fun questions. The teacher would then check up to see what students already know, like do some quick review of the past. And that's important because our knowledge is all in hierarchies. So if you were to learn something and you didn't have one of the foundational pieces to do it, it's going to be really hard. This is like the Swiss cheese theory of learning. I've learned 80% in grade seven and I learned 80% in grade eight and 80% in grade nine. But then I get to something in grade 10 that needed all these pieces that was the last 20% I didn't learn. And then I struggle. So as a teacher, you want to make sure the students have a good scaffolding, a good foundation to build upon. Tell them what to do in the class. You have the class at the end. You get them to think back what had happened in the class, get them to recall it, right? Because it's another form of learning. No taking during the class isn't as effective as forcing your brain to recall the key points during the class while you're at the end of it. And then you preview what's next. In the main segment, you just want to teach maybe for 8, 12 minutes. You're going to give them new knowledge and basically create a scaffolding of knowledge that you can get them to apply. And the more activity that you can apply, the more that you get students to apply themselves, the more you can see how they're doing and the platform can help you do that through analytics, give the students feedback the faster they learn. And that's the virtuous cycle you want to get. You want to get students applying themselves, struggling a bit, getting help because that's the most efficient way. That's the role of the coach or the teacher. You know, don't worry if you get blocked, struggle, I'll help you and get you that next level understanding. And students realize when they come to the virtual class, they're not coming there to passively watch because that doesn't work. They're coming there to apply themselves. They're going to make mistakes, probably have a little bit of fun. But the teacher is there as a coach to help them make that class the most effective use of their time and the most efficient way to learn. And we call that the virtuous cycle of applied learning. So we believe the most effective virtual classes are the ones that create the most space, the maximal time for applied learning and feedback. And that's how we learn. Absolutely. And you mentioned that AI should be the assistant, not really replacing the teachers. I don't think that's possible, right? Right. So for your viewers, I'll give the same question I asked. So imagine the AI is there in the class and it's near in the end. And imagine the AI could summarize the class for the student. Is that the most effective way of using AI? Not really. Not really. Okay. So for those of you that are watching this, just pause the video for a second. Think about the classes being summarized by AI. Is that the most effective use of AI? Okay. The answer is no. It seems like it is, right? People would tell you, I'll summarize the class for you. But what it does is it takes away an opportunity for the student to think about what the most important parts were. And imagine the platform allows the students to give, let's say, two key points. You spend three or four minutes, what were the two key points that were in the lecture? And imagine the AI is helping the instructor filter those. Maybe take away the ones that are silly and come back to the curated list with instructor vets and then use it as a way to summarize and then gives the students back the summary in their own words. And now we're getting to a place where I've gotten the students to work on something to think. And the AI is an assistant, that assistant coach to the teacher to help curate the list. But the teacher is still the final person and then give it back to students. That's how AI can assist learning, but it can't replace it. Absolutely. Totally agree. Let's touch a little bit on the topic of analytics. And I'm really curious to ask you, how can teachers, trainers, use analytics in the virtual classroom to improve learners' outcomes? Right. So you, I think a coaching analogy example, like if you have your players in the soccer field, you can reward them for the effort and you can reward them for the outcome, right? So if you're in a virtual class and you're applying yourself, and this is where Big Glue Button, we have built-in tools to apply yourself. Well, when you apply yourself, that generates analytics. I raise my hand. I respond to a poll. I'm talking. So we'll give you a sense of the effort that students are putting forth. And we're not, this isn't a grade, right? This is telling you who's applying themselves. And that gives you the instructor, the opportunity to say, hey, Sam, like respond to the questions. Like don't worry if you get them wrong, right? Just like a coach in the field would say, I need everybody running. Like, you know, Sam, like go for it, right? And so the teacher's role is visibility. Because think about what happens when you use a video conferencing system and students don't share their webcam, right? You've got, you know, like you've got a couple of webcams and you've got 30 students and you have no idea what they're doing on the other side. If you have the analytics, you can encourage students, you can call out and say, hey, Sam, you have to answer every question. It's just how we'll learn. And Sam would be there like, what? The teacher's aware of me? Yes, because we're not relying on video. We're monitoring the effort. And then you could ask about the outcome. And this is where quizzing and polling can come, right? So formative assessment. You're halfway through the class. You want to do a temperature check. Maybe AI can help you create a poll question based on the content, right? So it's not replacing you. It's just assisting you. Hey, is this a good, a good five questions where one of them is correct on what you've taught so far in the class? You'd say, okay, yeah, press the button. The poll goes out. You get immediate feedback from the students and you see if they're, if they're gas grasping what you're doing or they're learning. And this will tell you what you should do next. You need to shore up the knowledge a bit more. Or can you move on to the next one? So again, good information is coming back to make the most efficient use of the time in the class. It helps the teacher like an assistant coach. And the students realize they're coming there to run on the field. They're coming there to work and struggle is good. It's okay to make mistakes. It's just the natural part of how we learn. Yeah, absolutely. And last but not least, I would like to give you the opportunity to tell our audience a bit more about Big Block Button. What are you guys doing? What are you creating? And just if you can explain the basics first and then why do people should use Big Block Button as the virtual classroom? All right. So Big Block Button is a virtual classroom that is built into Moodle. The integration is there. It's been developed over 14 years and it focuses on one market, which is online teaching and learning. So if you use video conferencing systems and kind of the world looks like video, but as I sort of shared in the theory, real learning occurs when the teacher is getting the students to apply themselves, ideally getting some analytics back in terms of how the students are doing, and the students are there trying to make the best use of their time. And if you can give them feedback in the moment, then they realize the more I apply myself, the more I learn. So Big Block Button is designed around this theory of maximize the time for applied learning and feedback. So we develop things like visual assessment, where you can have students point at something on the screen and they can't see each other. But you as a teacher can see where everyone's pointing at. So if it was a tree or a map, you would instantly see, are they getting it, right? Breakout room is another good example. And then we take the content of the slides and we create poll questions for them on the fly. So Big Block Button is a platform designed to help the teacher teach and the learning learn by recognizing the more that we can help the teacher make the scaffolding of teaching easier. So like knowing where students are, getting them to give feedback, raising their hands and so on. And the more that we can get students to be applying themselves, so we free up that time by making it easier for the teacher to teach, we can create that opportunity where the students spend most of their time in the class applying themselves. Teachers can see how students are doing. So for us, it's like, well, can break out rooms? Can we get the teacher see all the break out rooms? These are things that we're working on. Can we get the students to like, maybe work on the whiteboard individually? And the teacher has this amazing bird's eye view of all the students working on the whiteboard and they can see this student struggling. Press that, they go into like a cone of silence, help that student out for a few moments. And the next one would be, okay, where's the next student? So you've got the class applying themselves and then you've got jumping in to help students out to get that level of knowledge. You can't really do that in a physical class. And this is where I believe the opportunity for virtual classes is not to replace the physical class. It should never replace that human to human. But like, you know, if you watch a soccer game live on TV, it's an amazing experience, right? You have commentary, you have different camera angles. Well, if you're in a virtual class, you should have this amazing experience where you're quickly going from like different modes of learning, different ways of engaging. And the teacher is there as the coach, helping the students bring out the best, challenging them and giving them feedback to get that next level of understanding. Thank you very much, Fred. I think we are really comprehensive on this one. I wish you a wonderful day and wonderful time here at World with Global. And see you soon.