PROGRAMM: STUDY BEHAVIOR APP
THEME: STUDY TIME
The general idea
Suppose you are a student and you failed a test. How can this be? You studied hard, really hard. But, how do you know? Did you compare your studytime with a standard? With other students? Probably not? So maybe you did not study hard enough. or maybe you did and you have to study in a different way.
The idea of the studytime – projects is to provide a student with feedback on their study time, so they are better prepared and know what went wrong or right.
Archived Projects (2017 – 2020)
Pomagisto is a 2017 ProtoType Quantified Student App. It quantifies the time a student invests in a certain course. It answers and quantifies the all important question:
I think I studied hard. But did I?
A Summary
Pomagisto connects to Magister, an administrative system that is used by 73% of middleschools in the Netherlands. Pomagisto finds out which assignments (tasks/homework/tests) a student has to do. Then it calculates the time that is needed and offers the Pomodoro-technique to students. Finally it measures the time that a student invest in a certain course and compares it with other students.
More information
The App Pomagisto starts with a login and an (one time) separate login on Magister. This separate login does not work yet, it will need some co-creation with Magister so the Prototype simulates the data.
But let’s assume it works.
The next step is to download assignments from Magister to the Pomagisto App. If a student selects a certain course they will see their assignments and the
Pomagisto App will suggests the number of Pomodoro-Sprints it will take to complete the assignment. The student than starts sprints of 25 minutes to complete the assignment. When he is done, he clicks finish.
The official Pomodoro technique consists of 25 minute sprints and than pauzes of 5 minutes. In this App however a student can pause a sprint. It are 12-16 years old after all. “The Pomagisto Cheat Code”.
The Quantified Part
The App than calculates the number of sprints per course that a students has completed. This information is compared with other students. The proto type only compares the sprints per week, but the next version will provide information about:
- Studytime per course compared to fellow students;
- Studytime per day compared to fellow students;
- Studytime compared to grades;
- Etc..
What’s Next?
The students finished their work in 2017 but it may not be the end of Pomagisto. The plan is to upgrade the App and start a pilot with a few classes in middleschools. Students are talking to Magister for a pilot.
(Update 2020: this failed)
What’s the big problem with a study time app?
You really want your Quantified Student Apps to be non-intrusive. You want to measure without asking the student. How do you do that with studytime? How do you find out if students are studying? And if you ask them, how do you prevent the data to be contained?
The sage continues…
Do you have a brilliant study time idea? Do you want to continue building on this app, please contact r.vandervorst@fontys.nl and we will provide you with code or more information (if available).