PILA_KarelApp_description_June 2021.pdf

Welcome to the Karel assessment application! 'Karel', a turtle-shaped robotic agent, needs help to navigate this grid-like ‘world’ and complete a few missions. To ensure Karel can achieve its goals, students will learn and apply computational problem-solving concepts and skills in a simple, accessible block-based programming environment.

Karel the Turtle

PILA | Karel the turtle

Students learn and demonstrate computational problem solving skills by building computational solutions that achieve specific goals and self-regulated learning skills by accessing and using automated feedback and information found in learning resources.

While we work on Betty's Brain, you can...

Help Betty do well on her test! Learn about complex phenomena, uncover and graphically represent the interaction among different variables and teach Betty about it all.

Betty's Brain

Students develop the ability to reason about causal relationships, learn about scientific topics and apply self-regulated learning strategies.

Students learn and demonstrate causal reasoning skills by reading about complex phenomena and mapping how concepts are causally linked and self-regulated learning skills by accessing and using feedback thanks to Betty taking quizzes or in conversations with virtual agents. 

Students learn and demonstrate 1) computational problem solving skills by using an event-based visual programming language to build solutions to increasingly complex problems, 2) creative thinking skills by developing novel and creative ways of designing a playable game, and 3) self-regulated learning skills by accessing and using hints and automated feedback to develop productive strategies for regulating their own learning in open problems.

This website uses cookies to improve your browsing experience.

PILA is a not-for-profit, international initiative that provides research-based learning experiences of 21st-century skills that embed next-generation assessment. Serving educators and researchers alike, PILA offers customisable learning and assessment material and gathers valuable data to report on what students know and how they learn.

Continuous Learning & Assessment

PILA is a not-for-profit, international initiative that provides research-based learning experiences that embed next-generation assessment. Serving educators, students and researchers alike, PILA gathers valuable data to report on what students know, what they can do and how they learn.

The OECD Platform for Innovative Learning Assessments (PILA)

Free, research-based tools for learning and assessment

Platform for Innovative Learning Assessments (PILA)

Free, open-source learning and assessment tools that foster 21st Century skills

Gautam Biswas

Jérôme Brender

Engin Bumbacher

Grayson Cordell

Richard Lee Davis

Jason Ford

Stéphane Magnenat

Matthew McClain

David Moores

Fonzy Nils

Bonaventura Pacileo

Marian Rushdy

Hannes Sommer

David Weintrop

Celestine Akpanoko

Mario Piacentini

Emma Linsenmayer

Marta Cignetti

Sruthi Ranjani Vinjamuri

Alexandra Selee

Anna Becker

PILA is a not-for-profit initiative that provides free, open-source assessment tools for use in the classroom and is managed by the PISA innovative assessments team in the Directorate for Education and Skills at the OECD in collaboration with Know Learning. Teacher-focused and research-based, PILA aims at innovating assessment and teaching of 21st century competence and at contributing to a more joyous EdTech development.

About PILA

Supporting the use of technology-enhanced learning assessments in the classroom

With the goal of contributing to EdTech and education-related research, PILA commits to making the codes it uses publicly available and to the data it collects fully accessible in an anonymized form. If you are a developer or a researcher, we invite you to join PILA!

PILA for Research

Empowering research and EdTech development

Find out more about our privacy commitments

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

What Are Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately is most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

How We Use Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

Disabling Cookies

We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

The Cookies We Set

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Bibsonomy, Reddit,, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Third Party Cookies

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us at edu.pila@oecd.org.

More Information

This page will tell you all you need to know on PILA's cookie policy

Cookie Policy

What skills are taught and assessed in Betty's Brain?

In this application, students teach a virtual agent, Betty, about complex phenomena by using resources and causal mapping tools.

In this application, students adopt a teaching role to help a virtual agent, Betty, learn about a complex phenomenon, such as climate change and thermoregulation. Students read about cause-and-effect relationships in a resource book and build a causal map to represent how different variables are related. Students receive feedback on their progress by asking Betty to take quizzes and chatting with the mentor agent, Mr. Davis. 

The Betty's Brain application aims to develop and assess students' causal reasoning, systems thinking and self-regulated learning skills. Students create a causal map based on learning resources to teach a virtual agent, Betty, about complex phenomena.

Betty's Brain Application

What skills are taught and assessed in Karel the Turtle?

In this application, students program instructions to help a robotic turtle to navigate and complete tasks in a grid-like world. 

In this application, students are asked to build programs to instruct a robotic turtle, Karel, to navigate and complete tasks in a grid-like world. Within the block-based programming environment, students can iteratively build solutions, test them and receive automated feedback. Covering a wide range of complexity, Karel the Turtle tasks can challenge students at every level of ability!

The Karel the Turtle application aims to develop and assess students' computational problem solving and self-regulated learning skills. Students are asked to build programs to instruct a robotic turtle, Karel, to navigate and complete tasks in a grid-like world.

Karel the Turtle Application

What skills are taught and assessed in the Game Creator by Cand.li?

In this application, students program game elements and design environments to create video games.

Interested in using the Game Creator by Cand.li?

In this application, students learn to design, program and test games. Using an event-based programming environment, students can make game elements come to life, create complex game behaviours and receive automated feedback. They must also design the game "world" by combining and placing sprites (e.g. platform, tree) in an open environment. The Game Creator gives students the opportunity to create video games rather than just play them for a change!

The Game Creator powered by Cand.li application aims to develop and assess students' computational problem solving, creative thinking and self-regulated learning skills. Students create video games by designing environments and programming each element.

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Contents

Explore the PILA platform

Contents

Explore the PILA platform

Contents

Explore the PILA platform

Find out more about our privacy commitments

Find out more about our privacy commitments

Find out more about our privacy commitments