wire - news in brief

EPFL research investigating the potential impact on education of AI assistants has found that systems like GPT-4 can answer up to 85% of university assessment questions correctly.

Challenges and setbacks can strengthen students' resilience and are an important aspect of learning.

Live streaming and recorded lectures mean students can easily keep up with a class without ever setting foot in the classroom.

New article on jigsaw learning published in Sage Journals The jigsaw classroom is a cooperative learning method designed in the late 1970s to improve the academic performance of minority children by reducing intergroup conflict and increasing self-evaluations.

Unconscious biases are formed by the culture and society we live in, along with our education and personal experiences.

The values that matter most to primary school children are safety and the well-being of others. Teachers, meanwhile, also want to cultivate self-direction - in the same way that the Swiss curriculum aims to do.

How did teaching staff cope with the sudden switch to online teaching during the coronavirus pandemic? Researchers from the University of Basel investigated this in collaboration with Eucor - The European Campus.

As the new academic year kicks into gear, we spoke to Simone Deparis, the executive director of EPFL's Propedeutic Center (CePro), which is aiming to raise the first-year pass rate (currently 51.5%) without lowering standards.

The title of the encounter organised by L'ideatorio, USI's service for promoting scientific culture, and the USI Institute of Public Health was "Smartphones and Teenagers.

Higher aspirations lead to higher achievements. At least, that is true in the context of educational and occupational aspirations, as shown by a new study co-authored by economist Dr. Reto Odermatt of the University of Basel. Unrealistically high aspirations as a teenager, however, can have a negative effect on well-being as an adult.

Signs and symbols are intended to provide orientation in public spaces. Once we-ve understood their message, we take note of it and usually think no more of it.

EPFL startup School Rebound has developed a revolutionary application that uses artificial intelligence to help students improve their handwriting in a fun and personalized way.

A team from the University of Geneva demonstrates that eye-tracking can be used to assess the perceptual abilities of people with multiple disabilities.

How does childcare outside of the family affect the development of children and adolescents? To answer this question, researchers at the University of Zurich surveyed around 1,300 Zurich school children, their parents and teachers. The survey suggests that the more time children spend in external daycare, the more likely they are to exhibit problematic behavior; however, this behavior generally disappears at the end of primary school.

Switzerland's two federal institutes of technology have teamed up to offer a new joint doctoral programme in the learning sciences.

How does a machine recognise plankton? In much the same way as people recognise the faces of other people.

Researchers at the University of Geneva have found that emotion knowledge, cooperative social behaviour and locomotor activity are three key skills for promoting numerical learning in children aged 3 to 6.

The R2T2 Mars Mission is an educational project developed at EPFL for grade-school and high-school classes that use the Thymio robot.

Blind children do not apprehend the world in the same way as their sighted counterparts. A research team from the University of Geneva and Université Lumière Lyon 2 have developed tactile books that are tailored specifically to their needs.

Gifted students improve their grades when they take online courses, whereas students in difficulty do not.

A recent study in South Africa and Ghana shows people support government steps to combat Covid-19 but lack the infrastructure and financial security required to maintain social distancing.

Pretend play promotes the development of socio-emotional competences in children aged five and six. Being socially and emotionally competent from an early age is likely to help children win acceptance by their peers, build better relationships with teachers, and facilitate academic learning.