The idea of Tuvatar started in February 2020, drawing on tutor learning and role identity theories. Tuvatar aims to encourage students to give constructive comments to their peers and create a productive group atmosphere. It is designed for students to experience group cohesion and see their role even when everyone in the group is anonymous.
The very first implementation of Tuvatar (web app) was released in April 2020 to a group of postgraduate students at the University of Sydney. The rationale behind Tuvatar was presented at the CRLI Doctoral Colloquium on 15th June 2020, as a FASS Three Minute Thesis on 30th July 2020, and as an ASCILITE Extended Abstract on 1st December 2020.
Based on the experience gained during the development of Tuvatar, further reviews of the literature and feedback received from users, Tuvatar has gone through a lot of changes and upgrades. The latest version of Tuvatar was completed in late 2021 and released in January 2022.Â
The new Tuvatar was introduced to a group of researchers at CRLI on 28th January 2022, used by postgraduate students since February 2022, published at the ISLS conference (and available at the ISLS Repository), presented as a CSCL poster on 9th June 2022, and explained in the video below:
Although Tuvatar has received interest and attention from educators and researchers, developing and maintaining a web app without financial support is very difficult. Therefore, public access to Tuvatar is suspended from 14th January 2023 and Tuvatar will look for funding to support its sustainability.
The past three years had been an exciting learning journey, Tuvatar may go offline for a while but will not go forever. Once financial support is secured, Tuvatar will resume the free public access and continue to enhance its functionality.
If you would like to use Tuvatar, collaborate or help, please get in touch or visit this page for updates.
Sorry for the inconvenience but Tuvatar has to temporarily go offline.
Stay well. We'll be back online as soon as possible!
- The Tuvatar Team