Most online platforms emerged out of content management systems or education management systems. Most of these Learning Management Systems (LMS) have features that allow communications between students and teaching team. However, it is common that the students and teaching team will create slack, WhatsApp, or Dischord to communicate since they find the existing LMSs lacking.

This project aims to use an instant messaging client like element.im (formerly riot.im) as a basis to develop a platform for teaching and learning. The primary focus is programming education and the platform should support use in online and face-to-face tutorials. The aim of the project is first to identify the requirements that are imposed on such a platform to be suitable for education. It should develop use cases and scenarios, and tools that support these. It should design a system that is tailored to programming education, in particular, to support the teaching of languages such a Java and Python. The project then should investigate the educational impact of applying this tool in a course.

The project would be related to the Atelier project. This SURF project works on a platform that assists teaching assistant to provide better feedback in programming classes to students. The projects would be aligned, especially in their educational outlook, but operate independently. The aim of this project takes some ideas that were present in the Atelier project and takes them to their logical conclusion. You can find more information on the ATELIER project here:  https://www.utwente.nl/en/eemcs/fmt/research/projects/atelier/