New pub: Fostering children’s acceptance of educational apps

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…
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Keynote @ #JTELSS23 – Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Keynote @ #JTELSS23 – Towards Highly Informative Learning Analytics

Conference, Feedback, Higher Education, Keynote, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Summer School
Hendrik Drachsler delivered a keynote presentation at the 17th EATEL Summer School on Technology-Enhanced Learning (JTELSS 2023) in La Manga, Spain that unveiled groundbreaking insights from the Highly Informative and Learning Analytics (HILA) research program. This exciting initiative explores the effectiveness of HILA and the transformative power of data-enriched learning activities in providing highly informative feedback to students. Here a few highlights from Hendrik's keynote, showcasing the potential of HILA to revolutionize learning outcomes. The Power of Feedback Extensive research has long recognized the profound impact of feedback on learning success. Hendrik's presentation revealed that HILA surpasses traditional feedback methods by offering even higher efficacy. By going beyond simple right or wrong responses, HILA provides actionable feedback that enables students to exercise effective metacognitive control over their learning process. This…
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New pub: Digitalisierung und Diagnostik in Schulen – Herausforderungen für Bildungspraxis und Bildungsforschung

New pub: Digitalisierung und Diagnostik in Schulen – Herausforderungen für Bildungspraxis und Bildungsforschung

Assessment, Book chapter, Computational Psychometrics, Digitalisation, Learning Analytics, Research Methods, Research topic, School
In the spring of 2020, schools faced an unprecedented challenge as the pandemic disrupted traditional modes of instruction and school development. With on-site learning replaced by digital formats and distance communication, educators had to quickly adapt to the new normal. Amidst these changes, the field of education encountered specific challenges related to digital school management, digital learning, and assessing learning progress. Particularly, computer-aided diagnostics emerged as a valuable tool for gaining insights not only into learning outcomes but also into the learning process itself. Researchers became intrigued by the potential of digital media in shaping learning experiences and how the resulting data could be effectively utilized in educational practice. This paper explores the current challenges and potentials in computer-based, learning-accompanying diagnostics. The primary hurdles involve implementing suitable instruments within schools…
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A Vibrant Week of Exchange Between Brazilian and German LA Researchers

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…
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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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CORE: New project investigates students’ critical use of digital media

CORE: New project investigates students’ critical use of digital media

Assessment, Digitalisation, Higher Education, Project, Research topic, Target group
Students are increasingly using information from the Internet to learn for their studies. According to recent surveys, they even cite the Internet as their main source when searching for learning materials. Research shows that students often rely on inappropriate, irrelevant and scientifically unsupported sources when searching the web. Little is known about exactly how self-directed learning takes place on the Internet and how information is selected and processed. This will now be addressed by the new research group "Kritisches Denken in Online-Lernumgebungen in der Hochschulbildung (CORE)” (Critical Thinking in Online Learning Environments in Higher Education), which is being funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with more than 5 million euros over the next four years. The CORE project will investigate the critical use of digital media and information among…
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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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Paper and presentation about the topic of detecting disengaged reading at LAK23

Paper and presentation about the topic of detecting disengaged reading at LAK23

Conference, Conference, Event, Higher Education, Publication, Research topic, Self-Regulation, Target group
At the recent Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK23), Daniel Biedermann presented his paper "Detecting the Disengaged Reader - Using Scrolling Data to Predict Disengagement during Reading," to shed light on the potential for early detection of disengagement in readers. The paper presents a unique method for early disengagement detection that relies solely on the classification of scrolling data. By transforming scrolling data into a time series representation, each point of the series represents the vertical position of the viewport in the text document. Time series classification algorithms are then used to evaluate the data.The results were promising, with the method able to classify disengagement early with up to 70% accuracy. However, the study also observed differences in performance depending on which texts were included in the training dataset. Biedermann…
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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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