SUPERVISOR: judith ter vrugte
topic
Learning analytics refers to “the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Ferguson, 2012 p5). These learning analytics are used to inform adaptive services and critical self-evaluation. Learning analytics can be presented to students (student facing) or teachers (teacher facing). To foster education, learning analytics need to be displayed in a way that they are accessible, meaningful, and useful. Often this is done via ‘Learning Analytics Dashboards’ (LADs). Most research and developments in the field of learning analytics dashboards address two core challenges: 1) how to determine meaningful traces of learning (e.g., time spent, social interaction, document and tool use, artifacts produced (e.g., blog or forum posts), and exercise/quiz results) and 2) how to present them in a form that will be useful to decision makers.
General research questions in this program could be:
- How do different designs of teacher dashboards impact teachers’ decision making?
- How do different designs of student facing dashboards impact students (e.g. in terms of knowledge acquisition, actions and behavior, self-efficacy)?
references
Ferguson, R. (2012). Learning analytics: drivers, developments and challenges. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(5-6), 304-317.