UniDoodle learning tool helps students nail difficult concepts

Over many years, Dr Seamus McLoone watched students struggling to grasp difficult technical concepts from books and slides. He is an associate professor in the department of electronic engineering at Maynooth University and in his view these traditional learning methods didn’t serve students well. He believed they would learn better and faster if they could answer questions in real time to check if they had understood an idea or not. Coming up with a system that would let them do so individually, while also showing them immediately if their answer was right or wrong, was the start of what has now become the edtech start-up UniDoodle.

McLoone teamed up with software expert and Maynooth technical lead Christine Kelly to develop a very early version of UniDoodle in 2016. Since then the idea has grown legs. The system is currently on pilot and, to date, has been tried by more than 20,000 students confirming what McLoone already knew – visual learning works.

UniDoodle operates on smartphones and tablets. Students log on at the start of class using a specific code. The lecturer has already loaded the questions that go with the lesson in advance and at the press of a button a question will pop up on students’ devices and they answer it simultaneously on screen.

The system is sketch-based and this allows students to draw and add diagrams, equations and annotations to the image in front of them. The company’s AI engine then automatically assesses each response. The correct answer appears in the corner of the screen and their own answer is marked with a red X or a green tick.

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“In trials, nine out of 10 students who got an answer incorrect and were shown where they went wrong using UniDoodle got the answer correct the second time around. They also got it right a week later in a formal university exam,” McLoone says.

“It is a simple but very effective concept: if students draw the answer themselves and then see their answers displayed (anonymously) in a gallery-style format on a big screen, they gain a far deeper understanding of where they went wrong and how to correct their mistakes,” he says. “The complexities of engineering and other Stem disciplines require an answer system that goes far beyond the limits of multiple choice. UniDoodle is very intuitive and can help students grasp difficult concepts. Static text does not deliver understanding. Live visual classes win hands down.”

While UniDoodle was originally conceived for the problem-solving disciplines, McLoone says it is working well in other subject areas such as music and languages where students need to learn the subtleties of writing characters correctly. UniDoodle is applicable across the wider educational spectrum, with new case uses coming thick and fast, he says. And as it plays to visual learning, it will also be effective with neurodiverse groups.

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UniDoodle has another trick up its sleeve that’s going to appeal to teachers everywhere who spend hours correcting student papers. “The auto correct and analytics function can greatly speed up the correction time for visual-based exams,” says fintech and edtech entrepreneur Denise O’Grady, who will lead the spin-out of UniDoodle from Maynooth University later this year.

“Where this function can really make a difference is not so much in the individual classroom but where you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of scripts. Then there are significant savings to be made in both cost and assessment time,” she says.

UniDoodle received its initial funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and recent commercialisation funding of about €500,000 from Enterprise Ireland. The company, which is using a SaaS revenue model, is now in advanced discussions with investors to secure €2 million in funding to scale and launch the platform to the global market in September.