| 9 | | It is designed to meet the needs of: |
| 10 | | |
| 11 | | * Distributed thinking projects, in which volunteers must be trained to perform various tasks. |
| 12 | | * Volunteer computing projects, in which educating participants can increase their enthusiasm and commitment. |
| 13 | | |
| 14 | | These areas have the following properties: |
| 15 | | |
| 16 | | * Churn: constant turnover (scores or hundreds of new students per day); |
| 17 | | * Wide geographical distribution; |
| 18 | | * Wide age distribution; |
| 19 | | * Motivation: most volunteers have a pre-existing interest in the topic, and are motivated by recognition (e.g. being marked as an "expert" on the project web site). |
| 20 | | |
| 21 | | == What Bolt does == |
| 22 | | |
| 23 | | Using Bolt, you can |
| 24 | | |
| 25 | | * Create exercises of various types: multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, graphical, etc. |
| 26 | | * Specify a ''course'' as a sequence of lessons and exercises. |
| 27 | | |
| 28 | | Given such a course, Bolt does the following: |
| 29 | | |
| 30 | | * It guides students sequentially through the course; |
| 31 | | * If the student fails an exercise, they repeat one or more lessons and retry the exercise(Bolt courses are designed to be "fail-proof"); |
| 32 | | * Each student's progress is recorded in a database, and when they return to the course later they resume at that point. |
| 33 | | * Bolt maintain an estimate of each student's mastery of the course material. |
| 34 | | |
| 35 | | In addition, Bolt lets you create better courses; specifically, you can |
| 36 | | * make statistically valid comparisons of alternative lessons; |
| 37 | | * make "adaptive" courses in which different lessons are used for different groups of students |
| 38 | | |
| 39 | | This is done as follows: |
| 40 | | |
| 41 | | * Bolt records the timing and results of each student interaction (viewing a lesson or completing an exercise) in a database. |
| 42 | | * Demographics (age, sex, education level, nationality) are stored for each student. |
| 43 | | * Course documents can have various types of "control structures". For example, they can specify that a lesson should be chosen randomly from a given set, or should be chosen based on student demographics. |
| 44 | | * Bolt offers analytic tools that let you evaluate the effectiveness of your lessons, and that help you make your course adapt itself to different types of students. |
| 45 | | |
| 46 | | == Creating exercises == |
| 47 | | |
| 48 | | A Bolt exercise is a PHP script. |
| 49 | | Here's an example consisting of a multiple-choice question: |
| 50 | | {{{ |
| 51 | | <?php |
| 52 | | echo 'Conifers are so named because:'; |
| 53 | | bolt_exclusive_choice( |
| 54 | | array( |
| 55 | | 'They carry their seeds in cones.' |
| 56 | | 'They are cone-shaped.', |
| 57 | | 'They originated during the Coniceous era.', |
| 58 | | ), |
| 59 | | ); |
| 60 | | ?> |
| 61 | | }}} |
| 62 | | Each time the question is shown, |
| 63 | | the choices are shown in a random order. |
| 64 | | The correct choice is the first element of the array. |
| 65 | | |
| 66 | | Here's an example that shows an image; |
| 67 | | a correct answer is a click in the indicated subrectangle. |
| 68 | | {{{ |
| 69 | | <?php |
| 70 | | echo "Click on the dog's nose:<p>"; |
| 71 | | bolt_image_rect( |
| 72 | | 'dog.jpg', |
| 73 | | array(100, 60, 110, 70) |
| 74 | | ); |
| 75 | | ?> |
| 76 | | }}} |
| 77 | | |
| 78 | | Bolt supplies functions for other types of questions, |
| 79 | | such as inclusive multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank. |
| 80 | | An exercise can include multiple questions. |
| 83 | | == Course documents == |
| 84 | | |
| 85 | | The structure of a Bolt course is defined by a [RFC:4627 JSON] document. |
| 86 | | Here's an example of a course with two lessons followed by an exercise: |
| 87 | | {{{ |
| 88 | | { |
| 89 | | "name": "Identifying Sierra Conifers", |
| 90 | | "description: "Learn to identify the major conifers of California's Sierra Nevada", |
| 91 | | "items": [ |
| 92 | | { |
| 93 | | "type": "lesson", |
| 94 | | "name": "Introduction", |
| 95 | | "file": "intro.html" |
| 96 | | }, |
| 97 | | { |
| 98 | | "type": "lesson", |
| 99 | | "name": "The Linnaean hierarchy", |
| 100 | | "file": "linnaean.html" |
| 101 | | }, |
| 102 | | { |
| 103 | | "type": "exercise", |
| 104 | | "file": "linnaean.php" |
| 105 | | } |
| 106 | | ] |
| 107 | | } |
| 108 | | }}} |
| 109 | | |
| 110 | | Course items can be grouped into '''sets'''; for example: |
| 111 | | |
| 112 | | {{{ |
| 113 | | { |
| 114 | | "type": "set", |
| 115 | | "show_n": 1, |
| 116 | | "order": "random", |
| 117 | | "items": { |
| 118 | | { |
| 119 | | ... |
| 120 | | } |
| 121 | | } |
| 122 | | } |
| 123 | | }}} |
| 124 | | |
| 125 | | The attributes of a set include: |
| 126 | | |
| 127 | | * show_n: the number of items in the set to show |
| 128 | | * order: whether to show the items sequentially or randomly |
| 129 | | |
| 130 | | Items (lessons, exercises, and sets) can include '''properties''', e.g.: |
| 131 | | |
| 132 | | {{{ |
| 133 | | { |
| 134 | | "type": "lesson", |
| 135 | | "name": "The Linnaean hierarchy", |
| 136 | | "file": "linnaean.html" |
| 137 | | "properties": { |
| 138 | | "verbal_level": 12, |
| 139 | | "detail_level": 0.8 |
| 140 | | } |
| 141 | | }, |
| 142 | | }}} |
| 143 | | |
| 144 | | When Bolt has a choice of items (e.g. when it encounters a set from which a |
| 145 | | single item is to be shown) it calls, for each item, a course-supplied |
| 146 | | '''matchmaking function''', passing to it the student object |
| 147 | | (which includes demographics such as age) |
| 148 | | and the item's properties (represented as a PHP object). |
| 149 | | The matchmaking function returns a number representing the estimated |
| 150 | | effectiveness of that item for that student, |
| 151 | | and Bolt chooses the item with the highest value. |
| 152 | | |
| 153 | | == Memory refresh == |
| 154 | | |
| 155 | | Bolt offers a ''memory refresh'' system that periodically repeats exercises |
| 156 | | and, if necessary, lessons. |
| 157 | | Memory research suggests that this is necessary for students to shift |
| 158 | | learning to long-term memory. |
| 159 | | This mechanism works as follows: |
| 160 | | |
| 161 | | * A sequence of ''inter-refresh intervals'' is defined. For example, (7, 28) means that an exercise should be repeated 7 days after it is first taken, and then every 28 days thereafter. |
| 162 | | * Bolt provides a function that returns the set of items, for a given student, for which refresh is due. Your course can use this function to implement a "Review now" button on web pages. |
| 163 | | * Bolt provides a "review mode" in which the student is presented with exercises due for review. |
| 168 | | Bolt offers two web-based analytic tools, ''course maps'' and ''lesson comparer''. |
| 169 | | You can use these tools to iteratively refine your course: |
| 170 | | |
| 171 | | 1. Develop an initial course |
| 172 | | 1. Operate the course until a statistically significant sample size of interactions exists |
| 173 | | 1. Use the course map tool to find problem spots |
| 174 | | 1. Develop alternative lessons |
| 175 | | 1. Operate the course some more |
| 176 | | 1. Use the lesson comparer to find better lessons or to do demographic adaptation |
| 177 | | 1. go to 1. |
| 178 | | |
| 179 | | === Course maps === |
| 180 | | |
| 181 | | A ''course map'' shows you the overall flow of students through your course |
| 182 | | (in the style of Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's march to Moscow in the war of 1812), |
| 183 | | revealing the points where they are getting bored or discouraged. |
| 184 | | |
| 185 | | [[Image(http://boinc.berkeley.edu/images/minard_napoleon.jpg)]] |
| 186 | | |
| 187 | | A course map shows you graphically how many students enter each step of the course, |
| 188 | | how many seconds they spend there, |
| 189 | | and their average performance on exercises. |
| 190 | | You can get a color-coded breakdown by any student attribute, |
| 191 | | and you can select a subpopulation based on attributes. |
| 192 | | |
| 193 | | === Lesson comparer === |
| 194 | | |
| 195 | | You can develop several alternative lessons for the same concept and, |
| 196 | | using the "set" construct, arrange for them to be selected randomly, |
| 197 | | followed by a single exercise. |
| 198 | | You can then use Bolt's ''lesson comparer'' tool to study the results. |
| 199 | | The tool will tell you, for a given statistical confidence level: |
| 200 | | * whether one lesson is worse than another, e.g. students viewing lesson A score worse than students viewing lesson B |
| 201 | | * whether a given lesson is better for a particular demographic subgroup, e.g. a lesson is highly effective for females under 18. |
