The Universe is expanding

Engagement at the Department of Informatics

The universe we are focusing on here has its beginnings at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (UiO). Associate Professor Omid Mirmotahari wanted to increase engagement, attendance, and completion rates for students in the large introductory courses. The students needed a platform that adapts the learning experience to each student's level, encourages collaboration, and makes learning fun. This is how Universet (“The Universe”) was born. The gameified, pedagogical, and research-based approach, together with the developers’ passion for maximizing students’ learning outcomes, has given us a learning tool that has won several awards and is used by several hundred students each semester at the Department of Informatics.

The first versions was fully coded by engaged informatics students at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. Now Universet is taking a step out of informatics and is also being used at Kristiania University College and in the Biosciences at UiO.

Support from the IT Department

But before the platform could be used by more widely, standardization was needed. Universet has been developed over several years by dedicated enthusiasts, but now the time had come to make it more independent of its creators and to fit it into a framework for an IT service that can be used by more educators. The IT Department at UiO has taken part in the further development, and among other things, Feide login has been added. The administrator interface, the part that the educators use, has also been developed to make it easier to use.

Senior Engineer Mali Aalbu at the IT Department is now the responsible product manager for the further development of Universet. She took part in the development in the original student project and believes that the work on standardizing Universet has been successful. “This is both rewarding and fun, and really cool that students are still involved in the coding. The project has attracted much attention and gained great trust,” Aalbu says.

The pace of innovation in the work is high. Universet can now be used outside UiO as well, but development continues. This autumn, meetings are also planned with UiO’s Department of Education Services to explore how Universet can be offered more widely “at home”. “We are constantly working to further develop and improve the product. The close cooperation between the IT Department, student employees, and the original creators has been crucial. Now we have an entirely new learning tool that follows the standards for an IT service in the higher education sector. It ‘stands on its own two feet’ and can be used in new study programs and at other educational institutions,” Aalbu concludes.

Busy days

It is a busy start to the semester at Kristiania, and Associate Professor Meh Sameen Nawaz has just let her students into Universet. “They are excited and think it looks great. They are looking forward to trying something completely new,” says Nawaz, who is course coordinator for the course Molecular Cell Biology.

It was a tip from a colleague over lunch that put Nawaz on the trail of Universet. “I was looking for a learning platform in Norwegian. This is the first year that the students have textbooks in English, and we wanted to offer a digital solution in Norwegian to ease the cognitive load. And one of the advantages of Universet is precisely that it is in Norwegian. This is the first semester we are using Universet, but I already think that there is an opportunity here to build a lasting platform for our students,” she adds.

Good collaboration

Nawaz is also pleased with the support she has received from both Omid Mirmotahari and the IT Department at UiO. “They have been very available and responsive. I’ve had to learn a new system, but with this team it has gone perfectly well. The collaboration has been excellent, and now we at Kristiania are also administrators and can enter questions and assignments ourselves.”

Universet in biology

Some have asked Nawaz how it works to use a system that was developed for informatics and that uses stars and planets to organize learning. Surely that is far removed from cell biology? But for Nawaz, the connection is natural. “A cell contains many different components that collaborate and depend on each other, and that is also how it is in the universe,” Nawaz concludes.

New users at UiO as well

Universet is reaching more users at UiO as well. At the Department of Biosciences, Professor Inger Skrede is starting with a new students in the course Biological Diversity. Skrede heard about Universet from colleagues, and after Omid Mirmotahari visited them and told them more, she decided to try it out. “And now we’re up and running,” exclaims Skrede. “The students think it is fun and they look forward to starting to compete. This is a course with a heavy focus on concepts, and now they get exercises in a way that keeps their motivation up.”

Many exercises

Skrede also explains that a significant amount of work has been put in. The course has seven topics, and each topic has 75 exercises. “We need exercises at different levels, and we also have to ensure that students don’t get the same exercises again if they need several attempts to get through a topic,” she says.

Many people have been involved, and Skrede, together with Omid Mirmotahari, was awarded funds for educational quality to develop the pedagogical aspects. Former students were hired to help design the assignments, and now everything is in place.

“It has taken quite a bit of time, but it is worth it. We are giving students a new platform both for meeting in person and for collaborating digitally. We get a lot of statistics on how assignments are solved, which we can use to further develop and improve both the assignments and the teaching. The collaboration with both Omid and the IT Department has been very good, and with Feide login and a solid administration interface, Universet has become a solution that can be used widely,” Skrede concludes.

More about Universet

Do you want to know more about Universet, or are you wondering whether you can start using it at UiO or another educational institution?

On Universet’s IT service page you can read more about how Universet is used, and you can also contact the IT Department if you want to explore the possibilities for adopting it.

• Go to Universet’s IT service page (Norwegian only)