New Pub: Two Peer Commentaries on Aligning the Goals of Learning Analytics with its Research Scholarship

New Pub: Two Peer Commentaries on Aligning the Goals of Learning Analytics with its Research Scholarship

Commentary, General education, Learning Analytics, Open access
To promote cross-community dialogue on matters of significance within the field of learning analytics (LA), the editors-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics (JLA) have introduced a section for papers that are open to peer commentary. The first submission that was open to peer commentary is “A LAK of Direction: Misalignment Between the Goals of Learning Analytics and its Research Scholarship” by Motz et al. (2023) in which the authors compare the current state of research with the definition of learning analytics by reviewing research published in the past three years in LAK and JLA. Their aim is to answer the question: Is the learning analytics community doing what it set out to do, i.e. understand and optimise learning? Two of the peer commentaries submitted in response to this article are…
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Conference: Demo and paper presentations at EARLI 2023

Conference: Demo and paper presentations at EARLI 2023

Artificial Intelligence, Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Self-Regulation, Workshop
This year, the biannual EARLI conference took place between 21-26 August 2023 in Thessaloniki, Greece and EduTec member Ioana Jivet represented DIPF with two contributions. The 1.5-hour ICT demo Closing the Feedback Loop - A Moodle Plugin for (Semi-)automated Feedback introduced participants to the work of PhD student Tornike Giorgashvili, supervised by Hendrik Drachsler and Ioana Jivet, and the outcomes of the HIKOF project: LearnDashPlus, a Moodle plugin which helps teachers provide written feedback in large courses. This tool also prompts students to reflect on the feedback they received and allows teachers to explore if such feedback helps students to understand their learning behavior and improve their learning performance. Our tool is intended to work as an educational intervention and an instrument of dialogue between teachers and students and thus closing…
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Workshop: 5th CARLA Workshop at ECTEL 2023

Workshop: 5th CARLA Workshop at ECTEL 2023

Conference, Learning Analytics, Workshop
The fifth edition of Workshop on Culturally Aware Learning Analytics (CARLA) was organised by Ioana Jivet from Goethe University and DIPF together with Maren Scheffel from Ruhr University Bochum and Olga Viberg from KTH Stockholm. During the workshop, the participants were engaged in discussions around the design of educational technologies and rated the workshop positively. The rationale behind the workshop is that learning analytics (LA) have been implemented in various countries, often at a limited scale. We have also seen that LA have been used in different ways in different countries. This makes the transfer of LA solutions from one country to another challenging, due to varying contextual, technical, and cultural factors. In this workshop, we aim to identify and discuss possible cultural differences and also similarities–the factors that have…
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Workshops and tutorials at LASI2023 in Singapore

Workshops and tutorials at LASI2023 in Singapore

Feedback, Learning Analytics, Summer School, Workshop
During 6-8 June 2023, Ioana Jivet participated in the first in-person Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) since 2019, hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS). The event included a keynote delivered by NUS President Prof. Tan Eng Chye on how NUS is supporting education with educational data, a keynote delivered by Prof. Rebecca Ferguson on the current challenges and opportunities of the field of learning analytics (LA), an expert panel discussing the role of LA in the age of AI and a series of tutorials and workshops conducted by various professionals in the field of LA. As part of the program, Ioana Jivet led a 5.5-hour workshop and a 2-hour tutorial focusing on effective dashboard design, data visualization, and sense-making. The workshop "Effective Dashboard Design and Data Visualization for…
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New Pub: A checklist to guide the planning, designing, implementation, and evaluation of learning analytics dashboards

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…
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Reelection in the Executive Committee of SoLAR

Reelection in the Executive Committee of SoLAR

Learning Analytics, Team
Ioana Jivet has been reelected to the Executive Committee of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) for another mandate of two years 2023-2025. The Executive committee governs the society's work and meets regularly to decide on matters of policy, general business, the tabling of reports from any Committee and any other matter that requires the Executive’s decision-making powers. The Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) is an inter-disciplinary network of leading international researchers who are exploring the role and impact of analytics on teaching, learning, training and development. SoLAR has been active in organizing the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK) and the Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI), launching multiple initiatives to support collaborative and open research around learning analytics, promoting the publication and dissemination of learning analytics research, and advising and…
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Highly Informative LA Workshop at LAK23

Highly Informative LA Workshop at LAK23

Conference, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Workshop
On the 13th of March 2023, as part of the LAK23 conference, five EduTec team members (Daniele Di Mitri, Ioana Jivet, Sebastian Gombert, Atezaz Ahmad and Hendrik Drachsler) organised a full-day workshop on Highly Informative Learning Analytics with Marcel Schmitz from Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. In this workshop, we investigated the concept of highly informative learning analytics and proposed a methodology for designing an environment that delivers highly informative learning analytics. The workshop is intended as a hands-on, interactive session that allows participants to test the methodology’s potential in a realistic use case. The proposed approach is based on the four-stage process of the Design Cycle for Education (DC4E). We exemplify practical tools that were designed in-house for each stage, including a tool to support teachers while…
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Best Short Paper Award Nomination @LAK23

Best Short Paper Award Nomination @LAK23

Award, Conference, Conference, Higher Education, Learning Analytics
The protection of students’ privacy in learning analytics (LA) applications is critical for cultivating trust and effective implementations of LA in educational environments around the world. However, students’ privacy concerns and how they may vary along demographic dimensions that historically influence these concerns have yet to be studied in higher education. Gender differences, in particular, are known to be associated with people's information privacy concerns, including in educational settings. Building on an empirically validated model and survey instrument for student privacy concerns, their antecedents and their behavioral outcomes, we investigate the presence of gender differences in students’ privacy concerns about LA. We conducted a survey study of students in higher education across five countries (N = 762): Germany, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Using multiple regression analysis,…
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Invited talks about providing feedback with learning analytics

Invited talks about providing feedback with learning analytics

Assessment, Feedback, General education, Invited talk, Learning Analytics, Self-Regulation
In the month of November, Ioana Jivet was invited to share her work on two occasions. The first was an invited lecture in the course FDH3006 Introduction to Learning Analytics part of a PhD Program at KTH Stockholm in collaboration with the University of Bergen, Norway and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The talk covered the topic of "Generating highly informative feedback with learning analytics" and addressed the question of how we can design effective feedback to students in online environments using learning analytics. The second talk was given as part of the event 100 DAYS OF... Data for Learning organised by the Centre for Education and Learning at TU Delft. The presentation covered the topic of student facing-learning analytics and goal setting. The talk was recorded and is available…
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Third edition of the Culturally Aware Learning Analytics (CARLA) Workshop at ECTEL22

Third edition of the Culturally Aware Learning Analytics (CARLA) Workshop at ECTEL22

Conference, General education, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Workshop
On the 13th of September, as part of the EC-TEL22 conference, EduTec team member Ioana Jivet co-hosted the third edition of the Culturally Aware Learning Analytics (CARLA) Workshop together with Olga Viberg from KTH Stockholm and Maren Scheffel from Ruhr University Bochum. Learning analytics (LA) have been implemented in various countries, often at a limited scale. We have also seen that LA have been used in different ways in different countries. This makes the transfer of LA solutions from one country to another challenging, due to varying contextual, technical, and cultural factors. Also, the idea that a ‘one size fits all’ paradigm does not lead to effective LA tool designs and implementation has become accepted within both TEL and LA communities. Yet, there is still a big question about what…
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