The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has awarded the ViLLE learning platform developed by the Centre for Learning Analytics at the University of Turku with the 2020 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize. The prize was awarded in Paris on 24 June.
The UNESCO Prize is a significant recognition of creative uses of new technologies to enhance teaching quality and overall educational performance. This support the UNESCO goal of Digital Learning and Transformation and the use digital innovations to reinforce this.
Each year, an international jury chooses two winners who both receive US$25,000. In the award ceremony organised in Parison 24 June, the winners of 2019, 2020, and 2021 were awarded the prize. The ceremony was participated by hundreds of representatives of UN Member States, higher education institutions, research institutions and companies worldwide.
The theme of the 2020 edition was the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the continuity and quality of learning.
“The award ceremony made it even more tangible how valued and outstanding work our university and our unit conducts. I’m extremely proud of our team and grateful for all of our partners in collaboration,” says Director for the Centre for Learning Analytics Mikko-Jussi Laakso.
ViLLE is an online learning platform which offers students and teachers detailed information regarding the learning process in the form of immediate feedback and learning analytics. Most exercises are automatically assessed which allows teachers to spend more time on teaching and supporting students. The artificial intelligence of the system recognises and prevents learning difficulties in different subject areas. ViLLE contains a versatile selection of interactive exercises in different subjects, such as mathematics, Finnish and languages, and it is suitable for teaching from comprehensive school to university level. The platform is used by circa half of the Finnish schools and over 150,000,000 interactive exercises are completed with it each year.
> Earlier article about the award for ViLLE learning platform
