PRE2020 4 Group7

Group members

Name	Student ID
Benji van den Brand	1328255
Delorean Canlon	1225364
Nout Prins	0917546
Wouter Tulp	1325833
Rens Vogels	1378384

Introduction

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, a lot of the current education was forced to be given online. This evolution in education gave views into the world of online communication and its possibilities. These new views lead to speculation about the future of learning and about which parts of education could be moved to an online environment. Online or offline events, meetings, and lectures have their pros and cons, so it is logical that discussions are held about either offline or online activities. Some predictions go towards a hybrid form of education in the future, which features both online and offline aspects (Villegas-Ch, 2021). This would mean that online education would remain a big part of the education in the future, therefore improvements in online education will be useful for now and the future.

Many different platforms can be used for online education and every platform differs in their way of usages and strengths. One example of a platform is Discord, which has 140 million monthly active users (Curry, 2021) and is a known platform for teenagers and young adults because of its use for gaming. However, Discord use is not limited to gaming and it is a platform with potential for other forms of online communication such as business meetings and online learning. Discord is an effective and practical application that can also be run on a phone if needed (Ramadhan, 2021). According to research by Wulanjani (2018), most students gave positive responses and feedback towards Discord for a virtual listening class.

In this project, this research group will try to improve the application of Discord by adding an educational bot. Discord allows the addition of custom programmed bots which can have a lot of functionalities. Bots can make certain actions that usually take a lot of time or are impossible, very easy. A Discord bot can therefore be created to help teachers with certain tasks in online education to make it easier and more effective. This creates the objective for this course, creating a Discord bot with a multitude of useful functionalities to improve the educational use of Discord.

For this Discord bot, there is a specific user group for which it is intentionally created. This group consists of students and teachers in general. The bot is created with the experience the group members have of online education at the Technical University of Eindhoven. This will be coupled with literature research to investigate what is needed for effective online education. The team hopes to create a Discord bot that is useful for most students and teachers.

The user’s needs of students and teachers are an important place to start thinking about what needs to be implemented into the Discord bot. This user group requires that the system is easy to use and creates multiple functionalities for interaction. Rehman et al. (2013) stated that according to lecturers and students, interactive aspects in lectures are very important for the understanding of the subject. Interaction is a positive factor for concentration and for rehearsing the information gained in the educational session. This information combined with the group members' experience of online education and the current limitations of Discord, gave a list of useful functionalities to implement into the Discord bot:

• creating quizzes to test the students' knowledge;

• creating break-out rooms and dividing the students among these break-out rooms;

• calling a teacher to one of the break-out rooms;

• creating polls to quickly obtain the feedback of students;

• creating a break-timer for clarity in breaks;

• the ability for people to raise their hands;

• an easy way to share files with everyone;

• having one bot, that can split up into different channels;

• external bot control for ease of use for the teachers; and

• the ability to mute everyone except the main speaker.

At the end of the project, the group will have four deliverables:

• the final Discord bot;

• a TU/e wiki page;

• a presentation; and

• a demo.

The final Discord bot is the final product that is delivered in this project and will become a real Discord bot available for use. While creating the Discord bot, the group will update a TU/e wiki page with information on the progress of the group and all information about the project. This wiki page will be updated weekly with the progress and information gained in that week and will be brought to a conclusion in the final week(s) of the project. To present the Discord bot to the public, a presentation is created which shows the whole project of the group. This will also include a demo that shows the use of the Discord bot in a simulated setting. Via this presentation and demo, it will be clear what the group did this project and what the final product is.

Setup

Approach

During the project the Scrum framework will be used. Scrum is a technique used in projects for small groups. Scrum meetings will be held twice a week. To keep track of the progress that has been made, a Trello board will be created. This board is updated weekly.

Scrum is about starting a project by doing it. It is not exactly known what the deliverables are at the start of the project. That is why a list of implementations has been created that the team strives for. The team will start working on the listed features and find ways to implement these features along the way.

There will be four sprints, with every sprint lasting two weeks. The sprints consist of these stages:

1. research and planning;

2. implementation stage;

3. implementation stage 2; and

4. finalising deliverables.

After every sprint, the sprint is reviewed and notes are taken for improvements during future sprints. In this way any difficulties are likely to be resolved and the project can finish smoothly.

Weekly tasks

When	What	Who
Week 1	Brainstorming & planning	All
Week 2	* Finish SotA * Research Discord bot * First planning finished	SotA (Rens, Delorean) Discord bot research (Benji)
Week 2.2	Finish: Setup environment/Setup Github, link bot token to Github. Get the bot running. Start: Investigating how to implement functionalities	Will be divided during the meeting.
Week 3	Investigate how to implement functionalities. Make plan on how to implement it. Maybe even implement some already + Meeting Lambert	Will be divided during meeting
Week 3.2	Finished: Complete plan with list of implementations. and an idea of how to start implementing those. Implemented at least 2 functionalities.	Will be divided during meeting
Week 4	Finished 4 implementations.
Week 4.2	Finished 6 implementations.
Week 5	Finished 8 implementations.
Week 5.2	Finished all (10) implementations.
Week 6	Room for finishing touches and or delay for implementations.
Week 6.2	Room for finishing touches.
Week 7	Start with presentation + demo.
Week 7.2
Week 8	Hand in presentation + demo.
Week 9	Finishing wiki page.	All

	When	What	Who
	Week 1	Brainstorming & planning	All
26/4	Week 2	Start sprint 1. Finish SotA Finish USE analysis research Discord bots. First planning finished.	SotA (Rens, Delorean) Discord bot research (Benji) USE(Wouter, Nout) Planning(Nout)
29/4	Week 2.2	Finish - Setup environment/Setup Github, link bot account to github. Get the bot running. Start - Investigating how to implement functionalities.
3/5	Week 3	Update wiki with Introduction Planning and SotA Investigate how to implement functionalities, Finish dividing who implements what Meeting lambert End Sprint 1 Planning phase Start sprint 2: Early implementation phase
6/5	Week 3.2	Complete plan with list of implementations. and an idea of how to start implementing those. Implemented at least 2 functionalities.
10/5	Week 4	Finished: Implemented at least 4 functionalities, updated wiki
13/5	Week 4.2	Finished Implementing 6 functions
17/5	Week 5	End Sprint 2 Finished Implementing 8 functions Start Sprint 3: 2nd phase of implementing features.
20/5	Week 5.2	Finished with implementing all 10 functions
24/5	Week 6	Room for finishing touches and or implement extra idea's.
27/5	Week 6.2	Room for finishing touches
31/5	Week 7	Start with presentation + demo All implementations are completely implemented. End sprint 3 Start Sprint 4: Finalising deliverables
3/6	Week 7.2
7/6	Week 8
10/6	Week 8.2	Hand in presentation + demo
14/6	Week 9	Finishing wiki page	All

Deliverables

A Discord Bot with the following functionalities:

• Creating quizzes to test the students' knowledge;

• creating break-out rooms and dividing the students among these break-out rooms;

• calling a teacher to one of the break-out rooms;

• creating polls to quickly obtain the feedback of students;

• creating a break-timer for clarity in breaks;

• the ability for people to raise their hands;

• an easy way to share files with everyone;

• having one bot, that can split up into different channels;

• external bot control for ease of use for the teachers; and

• the ability to mute everyone except the main speaker.

Extra functionalities can be added to this list if time allows.

USE assessment

This project will be analyzed using the User, Society, Enterprise (USE) approach. With this method, it will be highlighted how all the separate aspects in USE relate to this project.

User

As stated in the introduction, the user group for this project consists of teachers and students. At the moment that this project is running, the COVID-19 virus crisis is currently very active in the world. Due to COVID-19 social contact is limited to decrease the chances of the virus spreading even more. This resulted in a sudden change to online education and the use of online tools to host a range of educational activities. For the user group, it is optimal if the level of education online can stay on the same level as the level of education that was standard in an offline setting. This should be achieved with as much ease of use, so no confusion can form a bridge for understanding. Following the introduction, it might be that future education will be a hybrid of online and offline methods. When this is the case, it should be that the benefits of online education are enhanced and the problems decreased.

Problems experienced by online instructors researched by Bakhmat et al. (2021)

The first image on the right shows the problems of online education according to online instructors with research by Bakhmat et al.(2021). Some of the problems cannot be helped with the use of software systems. For example, internet connection and computer competency cannot be fixed with software that the team is going to create. Only some problems can be remedied. Take a look at the fact that the quality of student work dropped together with stress and motivation. According to Rehman et al. (2013), interactive aspects are important for understanding and interest of students in the information. An online platform can form easy interactive aspects like quizzes or polls about the information that will come up in the future or about the information out of the past. For teachers, it is important that making these quizzes and polls is convenient, such that they will not lose too much time doing this and can use the ones they made multiple times. For students, quizzes and polls must be user-friendly and they must be able to do them regularly to boost the student’s interest and understanding. This will result in taking in more information during educational activities, making time use more efficient and giving a higher chance of passing an exam.

Benefits experienced by online instructors researched by Bakhmat et al. (2021)

The second image on the right shows the benefits of online education according to online instructors with research by Bakhmat et al.(2021). These benefits should be enhanced as much as possible to get the most out of the online aspects of education. Not all benefits can be enhanced by the use of software: they are mostly dependent on the teaching style of the teacher. Take for example the experience benefit of flexible hours or inviting experts. These are not software related, but nevertheless have advantages for online instructors in relation to their students.

Other benefits can be increased using certain software or a different educational platform. Some platforms can be used on mobile devices which boosts mobility and therefore the ease of use. It is also important for an online education platform to have clear controls: it should not make education harder than it currently is. The focus should be on learning and on the information in the activity, not on figuring out how the system works.

Last but not least, a platform should be able to give students the space to work individually and ask for help if necessary. This will boost self-development and individualism which are important benefits of online education.

Keeping in mind the benefits and problems of online education, the Discord education platform with the use of a bot should try to achieve as much of the previously named points as useful for education.

Starting with the problems, one of the most important points named is that interactive aspects need to be added so the users can stay interested, motivated and boost their understanding. This will be done by adding a functionality to the bot to be able to create quizzes and polls. The teacher can directly and easily test information or get feedback. Better understanding decreases the workload because less self-studying is needed. Furthermore, more interest in the information will make people stay focused on the activity which will in its place boost motivation. The benefits should be enhanced using Discord with the bot, starting with a simple fact, Discord has a mobile application that allows the user to do everything that he/she could do on a computer. This increases the benefit of mobility.

Moreover, Discord has simple controls which, after one session, will be clear for the long run. The bot will work with simple commands as well and the teacher will have a clear list of commands integrated into the system. Hence, the bot will provide help in achieving what the teacher wants. Lastly, Discord allows a lot of different channels where students can be divided into. The bot will be able to create separate break-out rooms and divide the students into break-out rooms. The students can also choose their break-out room and ask for help from the teacher in their break-out room. This provides self-development and individualism in the platform which is two of the benefits of online education.

Society

The Discord bot is going to create a better experience for and an easier way to set up online learning. If our project is successful at doing this, it will create benefits for multiple stakeholders in society. Currently our society is dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. This crisis forced all education to be conducted online. Research by Dorn et al. (2020) shows significant learning loss. And even higher learning loss in lower income classes.

The bot will help universities and other education instances to lower the learning losses. Their teachers will have an easier time setting up and maintaining a free online environment to teach their students. The tools provided by the bot will help them engage and teach students more effectively, and make discord a viable online software for teaching. For the students in lower income classes this is great as no extra cost will be made, as creating a Discord account is free.

Within a society education is often the backbone. The government will benefit greatly from better education. Research done by Baum, S. et al. (2013) found that people with higher education on average make 20% more money than people without. In turn the government will generate more taxes and the average GDP will go up, which will help the whole country.

Online education is more scalable than the classic in-person education form. You can stream a lecture to thousands of students online at a time. But a thousand students will not fit in a single lecture hall. This would make it possible to host cheaper education for more people from all over the world. It will create opportunities for students that are unable to afford housing close to the university or are currently unable to afford university at all.

The one problem that arises with online teaching is that student-teacher interaction will be less. Our Discord bot will have tools to help with this.

Enterprise

The USE aspect of enterprise of this project can be looked at from two perspectives. First, for companies, it is important to get new employees with modern knowledge into their company. For all companies, it is therefore important that students that come out of schools have enough and novel information to enrich the company. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of education is online. The level of education should still be the same or better as before to provide companies with suitable options for hiring. In the future, there might come hybrid teaching and this should also be of the same level or better as before. The Discord bot could provide a platform with all the tools present for giving students knowledge and maybe even improving the level of education. This would increase the number of suitable students for future hiring. This makes companies improve and grow.

Secondly, on the work floor of companies, there is also a need for platforms that can be used for online meetings, workgroups, and educational sessions. According to Lilly (2021), 60% of the UK working citizens are working from home. This means that they require an online platform to work from. Companies need to choose platforms that will fill all their needs. These needs will vary from company to company, but in this project one valuable option is provided. Using the educational bot on the Discord platform could be useful. This is for multiple reasons:

• companies also need to host educational courses to get their employees up to all the state-of-the-art knowledge from the work field. The platform created in this project is created for educational uses so following all the points from previous sections, this platform will be very useful for educational courses in companies;

• meetings and workgroups can also be done on this Discord platform with the use of the bot. Not all functionalities will be useful, but there are still some helpful utilities. Polls, raising hands, sharing files, break-out rooms, and muting everyone except the speaker could provide help in meetings and workgroups. Discord itself is a useful platform for meetings while it has a lot of customization to create the perfect online environment for a meeting or workgroup. Speech or video channels can be used to talk with each other and text channels can be useful for sharing information; and

• Discord is an easy-to-use program and this is needed because not everyone in a company has equal knowledge of technology.

With these possibilities, enterprises could benefit from the Discord educational platform bot.

State of the Art

The past decades, the advent of online communication tools have made virtual meetings more and more popular. Besides the possibility to communicate with friends or strangers over the web, it is now also possible to have formal meetings in an online setting. The last few years, universities have started to provide an increasing proportion of their education via the web to their students . The effects thereof have been studied extensively, for example on increasing the motivation of students in this online learning environment . Furthermore, research has been done on the best practices of E-learning, combining the perspectives of both academic staff members and students . The current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition from an offline to an online work environment, increasing the number of meetings per person with no less than 12.9 percent . Luckily, the world was somewhat prepared for this virtual venture, since many online platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Discord were already available. In this project, the focus is on the Discord, an online platform originally designed as a social gaming platform. The past two years, Discord has developed itself into a multipurpose tool with education as one of its main functions .

Although the need for offline education is becoming a larger issue as the pandemic continues and many are eager to go back to in-person get-togethers, it is plausible that online meetings will have a larger role in our society than they had before the pandemic. Because, as the scientific world has discovered, online meetings have many advantages .

Challenges

Unfortunately, there are some challenges to online education as well. Teachers should for example have certain technical skills to effectively teach in online learning environments . Other challenges are about the risks of cheating and plagiarism during online exams and the reduced motivation of students . To make online meetings as effective as possible, online platforms such as Discord require a user-friendly design and should, by design, aid teachers in motivating their students.

Approaches

Even before Corona, several approaches have been studied to improve both online teaching and online meetings.

Showing only the slides to the audience is proven to be not very effective . Instead, different tools exist to help engage students during these online meetings. This can be through quizzes, polls or links to external websites. Furthermore there exist video tools focussed on user friendliness. This may help students or meeting participants who are not so familiar with online communication yet.

Another aid that can be used during online communication is automatically taking minutes. Normally in meetings there is always one person taking notes, the minute-taker . This person creates a “summary” of the meeting for people who could not attend or people who want to read it once more afterwards. It takes practice before a person is capable of extracting the most important information from a conversation to add to a summary. Besides that this person must multitask as he is also participating in the meeting. This problem can be resolved using a tool not just for transcribing, but one that accurately takes minutes .

One last approach for online communication focused on online as well as face-to-face learning. This way of teaching is called the hybrid educational model . Even though online education has many advantages, direct interaction with the teacher creates personal ties that positively affect motivation of students. This results in students scoring higher grades. If all education and meetings were to be moved online, a means must be created to simulate direct contact between pupils and instructors as much as possible.

Our solution

Our group has created a new tool to help businesses and schools with online communication. This tool is in the form of a Discord bot with commands that can improve the experience of online communication.

Multiple Discord bots have already been made in the past to create better working experiences. Requirements for such bots were, for example, that the bot should have a simple prefix and simple to use commands . Moreover, a documentation for each command and its features must be provided. This all supports the idea that operating the bit must be as simple as possible, hence creating a better user experience. Our own Discord bot is therefore also focused on ease of use. Besides that it has many functionalities that may help the users.

Nonetheless, people should keep in mind that this is just a tool. The roles that instructors have in online teaching, for example, are even more important . This is mainly due to the fact that they are best capable of motivating their students .

The Discord bot can still be used to make online communication interesting. It offers many possibilities to make the class or meeting interactive, thus gaining the attention of the listeners better .

Time tables

Week 1

Name	Student ID	Hours worked	Tasks done
Benji van den Brand	1328255	2	Meeting(3.5h)
Delorean Canlon	1225364	9	Meeting(3.5h), create planning (0.5h), State of the Art (5h)
Nout Prins	0917546	7	Meeting(3.5h), create planning (2.5h), research(1h)
Wouter Tulp	1325833	2	Meeting(3.5h)
Rens Vogels	1378384	9	Meeting(3.5h), State of the Art(5,5)

Week 2

Name	Student ID	Hours worked	Tasks done
Benji van den Brand	1328255	2	Meeting(3h)
Delorean Canlon	1225364	11	Meeting(3h), research of Discord bot with JavaScript (2h), coding bot (2h), proofreading and editing written text (1h), editing wiki (3h)
Nout Prins	0917546	2	Meeting(3h),Planning(1,5h),USE analysis(2,5h),Research Discord Bot(2h)
Wouter Tulp	1325833	2	Meeting(3h)
Rens Vogels	1378384	10,5	Meeting(1,5h), research Discord Bot(2,5h), coding bot(6,5h)