PRE2020 4 Group7

Group members

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.

Planning

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

Deliverables

• 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.

Week 1

Name	Student ID	Hours worked	Tasks done
Benji van den Brand	1328255	2	Meeting(2h)
Delorean Canlon	1225364	2	Meeting(2h)
Nout Prins	0917546	2	Meeting(2h)
Wouter Tulp	1325833	2	Meeting(2h)
Rens Vogels	1378384	2	Meeting(2h)

Week 2

Name	Student ID	Hours worked	Tasks done
Benji van den Brand	1328255	2	Meeting(2h)
Delorean Canlon	1225364	2	Meeting(2h)
Nout Prins	0917546	2	Meeting(2h)
Wouter Tulp	1325833	2	Meeting(2h)
Rens Vogels	1378384	2	Meeting(2h)