The ADJIE Project held a Transnational Project Meeting recently in Paimio, Finland. The programme of activities included visits to local schools – both primary and secondary. Workshops and lectures also took place in the town library and in two of the nearby universities. A couple of interesting tools that emerged during the trip include ViLLE and Wilma.
ViLLE is a collaborative education platform that enables teachers to easily create virtual courses and learning paths. All courses, exercises and materials can be utilised and evaluated by other teachers. Moreover, ViLLE automatically gathers data about students’ learning behavior and results while they are using the system. From the university’s point of view, this creates new research possibilities, as a huge amount of quantitative and qualitative data is produced.
So, why use ViLLE?
- Various exercise types
- Automatic assessment
- Manually graded exercises
- Immediate feedback
- Online exams
- Interactive tutorials
- Multifaceted statistics
- Collaborative work
ViLLE is primarily task based. Most of the exercises are automatically assessed and offer immediate feedback when submitted. The same exercises can be used in lectures, classrooms, for homework and exams. Obviously, in the exam mode the feedback is disabled by default. 
The exercises in ViLLE are divided into three main categories: coding and computer science exercises, mathematical exercises, and general exercises. The exercises categorized as general can be used in almost any topics (currently there are exercises for languages, geography, physics, chemistry, arts and biology, to name a few) so there is an opportunity to adapt lessons to the suit the Irish curriculums.
This resource is currently free and to gain access to it simply contact the ViLLE team here.
Wilma 
is a web interface integrated into the school management system. It is a student administration information system but also a tool used for communication and collaboration with parents. It allows students to register for courses, to check their timetable and grades, to read bulletins, to communicate with teachers and answer school surveys. Parents can also use Wilma to monitor their child’s progress and attendance, to send messages to teachers and to read school bulletins. In a way it’s like an extended version of Aladdin. Teachers reported that time and effort are required to maintain this approach but also suggested that it is well worth it because very positive relationships are developed with parents. Both groups work together in the best interests of the child. This is particularly advantageous when issues or concerns arise as they tend to get resolved with minimum of hassle.