May 2023 - EduTec Science

May312023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

A Vibrant Week of Exchange Between Brazilian and German LA Researchers

Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Research Methods, Research topic, Workshop

From May 22 to 25, 2023 five esteemed guest researchers from Brazil visited the EduTec team in Frankfurt in the context of the Humboldt Foundation's Connect Program. This productive exchange not only shed light on the current state of Learning Analytics (LA) research in Brazil and Germany but also paved the way for potential collaborative research activities. Status of LA research in Brazil The week began with a discussion of the role of LA in the global South. Rafael Ferreira Mello from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE) emphasized the importance of adapting LA methodologies to the specific context and needs of Brazil, ensuring inclusivity and accessibility in educational initiatives. Diego Dermeval from the Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL) highlighted the potential of AI and LA in supporting teachers…

May312023 by Joshua WeidlichNo Comments

New pub: Causal reasoning with causal graphs, published in ETRD

Journal, Publication, Research Methods, Special Issue

Educational Technology, like many other empirical research fields, needs to provide evidence for the causal effectiveness of their interventions. This is as important for establishing the efficacy of some novel educational technology as it is for theory-building. However, because educational research, especially field research, can be messy, tightly-controlled randomized experiments are not always the best option. Importantly, as our development paper shows, this does not mean that researchers should abandon all claims of causality. Instead, we highlight the importance of explicit causal reasoning, while equipping researchers with a tool to approach this daunting task systematically. Causal graphs (or Directed Acyclic Graphs = DAGs) are a low-barrier approach to reasoning about causality in all research contexts. Using a few construction rules, the resultant graphs allow researchers to figure out whether a…

May152023 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

New research program: Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Book, Computational Psychometrics, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Feedback, Further Education, Higher Education, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Research Methods, School

On May 12, 2023, the Highly Informative Learning Analytics (HILA) research program of the EduTec@DIPF, studiumdigitale@Goethe University Frankfurt and the Open Learning and Instruction group@Open Universiteit was presented by Hendrik Drachsler at the main campus of the Open University of the Netherlands. The release of the HILA research program marks a significant milestone for the collaboration in the field of learning analytics between of the Dutch-German research collective. The HILA research program is focused on developing new tools and methods to collect, analyze, and interpret data that can help educational institutions to understand the learning process better. As part of the program's launch, a keynote by Ioana Jivet on student-facing learning analytics was provided. Ioana reported on two empirical studies investigating the effect of data-driven feedback on students. [pdf-embedder url="https://edutec.science/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023_05-Keynote-Symposium-Hendrik.pdf"…

May42023 by Ioana JivetNo Comments

New Pub: A checklist to guide the planning, designing, implementation, and evaluation of learning analytics dashboards

Journal, Learning Analytics, Publication

Higher education institutions are moving to design and implement teacher-facing learning analytics (LA) dashboards with the hope that instructors can extract deep insights about student learning and make informed decisions to improve their teaching. While much attention has been paid to developing teacher-facing dashboards, less is known about how they are designed, implemented and evaluated. This paper presents a systematic literature review of existing studies reporting on teacher-facing LA dashboards. Out of the 1968 articles retrieved from several databases, 50 articles were included in the final analysis. Guided by several frameworks, articles were coded based on the following dimensions: purpose, theoretical grounding, stakeholder involvement, ethics and privacy, design, implementation, and evaluation criteria. The findings show that most dashboards are designed to increase teachers’ awareness but with limited actionable insights to…