Journal Archives - Page 6 of 9

Sep62023 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

New Publication: Contextualized Logging of On-Task and Off-Task Behaviours During Learning

Journal, Open access, Publication, Report, Technical paper

We are happy to announce the publication of our latest research paper that delves into the intricate relationship between digital media usage and the learning experience. The paper addresses key challenges related to monitoring on-task and off-task behavior and suggests innovative solutions for a more effective and ethical study of learners' media habits.Traditionally, researchers have faced a myriad of challenges in accurately gauging how students utilize digital media while learning. Self-reported data often suffer from issues like faulty memory, subjective perceptions, and bias. Understanding whether digital media use enhances or hinders the learning experience is an incredibly complex issue. We identified and addressed four core challenges in logging digital media use during learning: The logging system must only be active during the learning period to capture relevant data. Data collection…

Aug72023 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

New Pub: How well does teacher education prepare for teaching with technology?

Competence development, Digitalisation, Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Open access, Publication

Despite large-scale investments into the technological infrastructure of K-12 education, research has repeatedly shown that many teachers lack the expertise to effectively incorporate technology into classroom teaching. To support teachers in this, there is a need to understand how and when the relevant knowledge develops during teacher training. To this end, Joshua Weidlich and Marco Kalz conducted a study at Heidelberg University of Education, sampling prospective teachers (N = 526) and analyzing their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) across the seven dimensions of the framework. Specifically, they assessed (1) the extent to which students more advanced in their studies reported higher TPACK, (2) the effect of gender on these trajectories, and (3) the potential role of curricular cornerstones of the teacher education program. Regarding (1), they found that not…

Jun282023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New pub: Fostering children’s acceptance of educational apps

Journal, Learning Design, School, Self-Regulation

In the field of educational applications (apps), the focus has shifted from mere functionality to creating enjoyable and beneficial learning experiences for children. A recently published article sheds light on the influence of redesigning a mobile learning activity in an app to enhance its appeal and usefulness to young learners. By exploring the relationship between children's enjoyment, intention to use and the incorporation of emojis, this study provides valuable insights into optimizing educational apps. The study involved 103 children aged 9 to 14 years, who participated in a 27-day exploration of a mobile learning app. The objective was to determine how different learning activities influenced children's intention to use the app. The researchers revamped a traditional learning activity, replacing it with an emoji-based representation of learning plans. Two other standard…

Jun62023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New pub: Evaluating the Impact of FoLA on Learning Analytics Knowledge Creation

Journal, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Publication, Research Methods, Research topic, Special Issue

Learning analytics provides opportunities to improve the design of learning activities by supplying information on the effects of different learning approaches. Despite the existence of design methods that aim to facilitate the incorporation of learning analytics into learning design, there is a lack of research assessing their efficacy. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the FoLA2 method. In higher education settings, sixty participants utilized the FoLA2 method to develop fourteen learning activities. To gauge the impact, participants completed a technology acceptance test before and after each session. Furthermore, researchers analyzed audio recordings of the sessions using epistemic network analysis to gain insights into the discussions regarding learning analytics and the creation of enhanced learning activities. The results from both the technology acceptance test and the epistemic network analysis…

May312023 by Atezaz AhmadNo 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…

May42023 by Atezaz AhmadNo 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…

Mar82023 by Sebastian WollnyNo Comments

New Pub: Students’ expectations of Learning Analytics across Europe

Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics

What do European students expect from Learning Analytics? To help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) develop and implement Learning Analytics systems that support students' learning, a new article of Sebastian Wollny et al. investigates in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning the individual LA expectations of European higher education students. In this article a ‘Student Expectations of Learning Analytics Questionnaire’ (SELAQ) survey with 417 participating students was applied at the Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) and compared with responses of students from Madrid (Spain), Edinburgh (United Kingdom) and the Netherlands. Results: The results show that students’ expectations at Goethe University Frankfurt itself are rather homogeneous regarding ‘LA Ethics and Privacy’ and ‘LA Service Features’. Furthermore, it reveals that European students generally show a consistent pattern of expectations of LA with a high…

Dec142022 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

New Pub: Causal Inference and Bias in Learning Analytics

Journal, Learning Analytics, Literature review, Open access, Publication, Research Methods

Learning Analytics is an applied field of research with the goal of producing actionable knowledge to improve student learning. This requires knowledge about cause-and-effect. However, randomized experiments, the usual vehicle for causality, are not always feasible nor desirable. Researchers are then left with observational data, from which they are, understandably, hesitant to draw causal inferences. Fortunately, there has been a lot of progress on the topic of causality in the last two decades. One prominent framework uses Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) to graphically reason about cause-and-effect and/or bias. This primer, authored by Joshua Weidlich, Dragan Gasevic, and Hendrik Drachsler, published in the Journal of Learning Analytics, introduces DAGs to Learning Analytics. Using fictitious and published examples, we show how DAGs are a principled approach to a) improve causal inferences for…

Oct312022 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

New Pub: Untangling connections between challenges in the adoption of learning analytics in higher education

Empirical Study, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics, Publication

[caption id="attachment_4599" align="alignnone" width="967"] Associations of challenges and ethics: (a) none, (b) prep-partial, and (c) full adoption institutions[/caption] Potential benefits of learning analytics (LA) for improving students' performance, predicting students' success, and enhancing teaching and learning practice have increasingly been recognized in higher education. However, the adoption of LA in higher education institutions (HEIs) to date remains sporadic and predominantly small in scale due to several socio-technical challenges. To better understand why HEIs struggle to scale LA adoption, it is needed to untangle adoption challenges and their related factors. This paper presents the findings of a study that sought to investigate the associations of adoption factors with challenges HEIs face in the adoption of LA and how these associations are compared among HEIs at different scopes of adoption. The study…

Sep62022 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

New Pub: FoLA2 — A Method for Co-creating Learning Analytics–Supported Learning Design

Further Education, General education, Higher Education, Journal, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Open access, Publication, School

Finally, we have published an article about the FOLA2 method that we have used for over two years frequently to design Learning Analytics supported Learning Designs with teachers of various backgrounds. Learning activities are at the core of every educational design effort. Designing learning activities is a process that benefits from reflecting on previous runs of those activities. One way to measure the behaviour and effects of design choices is to use learning analytics (LA). The challenge, however, lies in the unavailability of an easy-to-use, LA-supported learning design (LD) method. We established a method—the Fellowship of Learning Activities and Analytics (FoLA2)—reinforced by a gameboard and cards to provide structure and inspiration. The method enables several participants with different roles to interact with a set of card decks to create an…