Lessons tailored to your needs: introducing the tMAIL project

“I was not that confident at first but it became more like a game and I could do it when I wanted,” said a primary school teacher – one of 68 who tried the app in its testing phase. tMAIL (short for Teacher Mobile Application for Innovative Learning) didn’t just train teachers in the theory of self-regulated learning. It also let them see it in action, with a dashboard of over 30 courses they could pick at will, and a platform that collected data about their learning progress (to be monitored by teacher educators).

The tMAIL project concluded in 2017, after a two-year run. Its final conference took place in October at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB); there, tMAIL project manager Prof. Koen Lombaerts gave an overview of the project results, while keynote speaker Steve Wheeler expounded on innovative learning for professional development. Afterwards, teachers and policymakers discussed the app’s impact in two parallel sessions – considering, for instance, how its learning analytics could help to shape policy and support.

Since November 2017, the SLIDEshow project has joined the ranks, training teacher educators in learning analytics to personalise their teacher support. Both projects were funded by Erasmus+ and coordinated by the VUB.

The assessment mechanisms of tMAIL will be fine-tuned in the future, introducing motivational cues like gamification processes and digital badges, as well as peer and student assessment features. Curious? You can download the tMAIL app here!