New research program: Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

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"…
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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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Visit from Sasha Poquet

Visit from Sasha Poquet

Digitalisation, Higher Education, Invited talk, Learning Analytics, Research topic
On April 13th, we had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Dr. Oleksandra (Sasha) Poquet, professor in learning analytics at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich, to our EduTec group in Frankfurt. The visit provided a valuable opportunity for the EduTec group to learn from Sasha's research experience and explore the future of educational technology. The visit began with an introduction by Hendrik Drachsler, who provided an overview of our current research and ongoing projects. This was followed by a presentation by Oleksandra Poquet, who discussed her current, present and future research. In the past, Sasha's research focused on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the impact of homophily on university course enrollment. She also discussed her work on Modelling Digital Networks with…
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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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New Pub: Students’ expectations of Learning Analytics across Europe

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…
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New Pub: Caught in the Lifelong Learning Maze: Helping People with Learning Analytics and Chatbots to Find Personal Career Paths

New Pub: Caught in the Lifelong Learning Maze: Helping People with Learning Analytics and Chatbots to Find Personal Career Paths

Higher Education, Learning Analytics
Abstract—Current lifelong learning platforms offer users a query option to select a wide variety of courses. However, finding a suitable course among the seemingly endless catalogs of options presented by the platforms is not straightforward. We argue that digital counseling can enhance this process. In this paper, we present a set of three formative studies where we explored the main aspects that can provide the counseling needed. The methods comprise an analysis of user profile characteristics and learning analytics indicators (e.g., learning progress/self-regulation) by means of an expert workshop, evaluating the feasibility of current technologies (e.g., natural language processing) for automatically assessing users' competencies, and a survey on the use of Chatbots as the interaction interface between the users and the lifelong learning portals. The analysis resulted in the extraction…
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Book Chapter – A Trusted Learning Analytics Dashboard for Displaying OER

Book Chapter – A Trusted Learning Analytics Dashboard for Displaying OER

Book, Book chapter, Learning Analytics, Open access, Project, Report
Abstract Learning Analytics (LA) consists of miscellaneous steps that include data harvesting, storing, cleaning, anonymisation, mining, analysis, and visualisation so that the vast amount of educational data is comprehensible and ethically utilisable by educators or instructors to obtain the advantages and benefits that LA can bring to the educational scene. These include the potential to increase learning experiences and reduce dropout rates. In this chapter, we shed light on OER repositories, LA, and LA dashboards and present an implementation of a research-driven LA dashboard for displaying OER and their repositories that allows the visualisation of educational data in an understandable way for both educators and learners. Moreover, we present an LA dashboard for displaying OER that shows information about the existing German OER repositories as part of our EduArc project…
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HIKOF – Evaluation Study Completed

HIKOF – Evaluation Study Completed

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Feedback, Learning Analytics, Project
In HIKOF (highly informative feedback for digital learning) project, the evaluation study has been successfully completed, where feedback was provided for about 1000 students in a Teacher Education Course (from Psychology department). Students' feedback on the feedback that was given to them was also collected to determine how comprehensive our feedback was, if it motivated them, and was helpful for them, and enhanced their learning progress. Specifically, the evaluation study focuses on the use of machine learning for  the creation of personalized feedback that is both formative and summative. Data from a pilot study serves as a starting point for the evaluation to further optimize the AI technology for generating feedback. The evaluation study aims to investigate the effect of Highly Informative Automated Feedback (HIAF) on student performance and perception…
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