Study of the flexibility of a learning analytics tool to evaluate teamwork competence acquisition in different contexts

Learning analytics tools and methodologies aim to facilitate teachers and/or decision makers with information and knowledge about what is happening in virtual learning environments in a straightforward and effortless way. However, it is necessary to apply these tools and methodologies in different contexts with a similar success, that is, that they should be flexible and portable enough. There exist several learning analytics tools that only works properly with very specific versions of learning platforms. In this paper, the authors aim to evaluate the flexibility and portability of a methodology and a learning analytics tool that supports individual assessment of teamwork competence. In order to do so the methodology and the tool are applied in a similar course from two different academic contexts. After the experiment, it is possible to see that the learning analytics tool seems to work properly and the suggested new functionalities are similar in both contexts. The methodology can be also applied but results could be improved if some meetings are carried out to check how team works are progressing with their tasks

Teamwork Development across the Curriculum for Information Technology Students at Liepāja University: Processes, Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Teamwork skills are key feature for Information Technology (IT) specialists. The university IT curriculum contains both IT specific courses, and comprehensive courses. Due to limited amount of the learning courses and efficient achievement of learning goals, it is necessary to look for opportunities to integrate activities developing social and communication skills courses into IT specific courses. Managing the teamwork that is close to practice, it is necessary to solve the problems of teaching and learning organisation, and assessment of individual learning outcomes and competences. In Liepāja University, the student teamwork has been managed for several years as integral part of Software Engineering courses and study projects. The course management system Moodle has been used in learning process providing possibilities to evaluate both assignments submitted by students and their learning behaviour.  The current paper describes and analyses the experience of academic staff of Liepāja University

Assessing the individual acquisition of teamwork competence by exploring students’ instant messaging tools use: the WhatsApp case study

[En] Nowadays, working in groups is very usual and popular in most professional environments. Thus, students, as potential workers, need to acquire teamwork competence in their educational institutions. However, when the students are working in groups, it is easy assessing their final result but not so much evaluating how each of them, individually, is developing teamwork competence. In this sense, there are several methodologies, and those with better results are the ones that explore students’ interactions in learning platforms when developing the activity/project. Taking into account the latter, students’ interactions do not only happen in a learning platform but also using other tools such as instant messaging tools. This paper explores the possibility to assess the use of instant messaging tools for the acquisition of teamwork competence, and specifically, it presents a case study about the use of WhatsApp. From the results, we can conclude that the students prefer to use instant messaging tools in teamwork activities than other interaction tools as forums; and that the employment of those tools has a positive impact in students’ grades.SIRoboSTEA

Assessment in Sustainable Remote Teaching and Learning Environments During Emergency Situations

This paper explores how quality assessment is maintained in the COVID-19 protocols mandatory remote teaching and learning higher education environments. The argument being pursued is that, despite the pandemic, the e-assessment ensures the sustainability of quality thereof even in remote teaching and learning environments. We compare e-assessments in these environments to how conventional assessments happen in in-person contexts. In this comparison, we unearth several challenges afflicting the conventional in-person assessments. These range from ill-prepared lecturers sometimes, who do not take time to formulate meaningful assessment tasks, to students who demand special treatment just because they are physically present and are able to 'bully' lecturers. In the COVID-19 mandatory remote e-assessments teaching and learning environments, despite the attended challenges of costs to install the Learning Management System and train academics, there seem to be many more positive outcomes. These include lecturers' ability to ensure that all students enrolled in the module read the materials provided, spend enough time doing so, and engage meaningfully with the learning subject content. That feedback is provided almost immediately to ensure quality in remote teaching and learning environments. Design research principles that serve as the overarching theoretical framework for this paper are used to identify the challenges to e-assessments, the responses to these challenges, the contextual factors that make the responses effective, those that pose threats thereto and how they are resolved and circumvented

“Buffets” as a learning experience in the subject of Statistics

[EN] Presentation of the experience in the subject of Theoretical Statistics in Business Administration degree. The philosophy is to offer a variety of resources and activities and each student chooses, according to their needs and preferences, their formation itinerary. In this approach there are few mandatory activities and each student decides how to get organized. The Moodle platform allows us to track what each student does throughout the course and how many times they have consulted the resources offered. From this information it is intended to assess what is the relationship between the use of these resources and the learning outcomes. In this sense, this experience shows us that three different types of students can be identified with regards to the use of the resources placed at their disposal: A first group of students with little interest that do not make use of the resources, a second group that use the resources but with little advantage, and a third group that devotes time and effort in using the materials. By analyzing the academic results of these three groups, it is observed that students in the third group are those with a higher grades. This experience leads us to an important reflection, it is not sufficient to make the materials available to students, no matter how good these are and it is not enough that the students access them. The key is to propose activities that make them work and reflect on the materials.[ES] Se presenta una experiencia en la asignatura Estadística Teórica en el grado de Administración de Empresas. La filosofía parte de ofrecer una gran variedad de recursos y actividades que cada alumno elige en función de sus necesidades y preferencias en su itinerario formativo. En este planteamiento hay pocas actividades obligatorias y cada estudiante decide cómo organizarse. La plataforma Moodle permite hacer un seguimiento de lo que hace cada alumno a lo largo del curso y de las veces que han consultado los recursos ofrecidos. A partir de esta información se pretende valorar qué relación hay entre la utilización de dichos recursos y los resultados de aprendizaje obtenidos. En este sentido, esta experiencia nos muestra que son identificables tres tipos diferentes de estudiantes en lo que se refiere al uso de los recursos: un primer grupo de alumnos poco interesados que no hacen uso de los recursos, un segundo grupo que sí los utilizan pero con poco aprovechamiento y un tercer grupo que dedica tiempo y esfuerzo a la hora de utilizar los materiales. Al analizar los resultados académicos de estos tres grupos se observa que los alumnos del tercer grupo son los que presentan unas mejores calificaciones. Esta experiencia nos conduce a una reflexión importante, no es suficiente poner a disposición de los alumnos materiales, por muy buenos que sean y tampoco basta con que el alumno acceda a ellos. La clave está en proponer actividades que les haga trabajar y reflexionar sobre los materiales.Jano Salagre, M.; Ortiz Serrano, S. (2017). “Buffet libre” como experiencia de aprendizaje en la asignatura de Estadística. REDU. Revista de Docencia Universitaria. 15(2):179-192. https://doi.org/10.4995/redu.2017.676017919215

Ciclos Autónomos de Análisis de Datos basados en la Minería de Procesos para el Estudio del Comportamiento Curricular de los Estudiantes

En este trabajo se evalúa el comportamiento curricular de los estudiantes de una carrera de maestría, a través de la Minería de Procesos. Específicamente, se analiza lo relacionado a la determinación de los factores internos y externos que inciden en la prosecución de sus estudios. Para comprender el comportamiento del estudiante, se usa la metodología MIDANO, la cual ha sido usada para el desarrollo de aplicaciones de analítica de datos. En particular, se especifican los Ciclos Autonómicos de tareas de análisis de datos que permiten estudiar el abandono de la maestría durante la escolaridad o durante el desarrollo del trabajo de grado, con el fin de determinar las causas o problemas que se presentan durante la prosecución de los estudios. Se obtuvieron resultados muy alentadores sobre las causas del abandono de la maestría que descubren los ciclos autónomos.In this work, the curricular behavior of the students of a master's degree program is evaluated through Process Mining. Specifically, what is related to the determination of the internal and external factors that affect the pursuit of their studies is analyzed. To understand student behavior, the MIDANO methodology is used, which has been used for the development of data analytics applications. In particular, it is specified the Autonomous Cycles of data analysis tasks that allow studying the dropout of the master's degree program during schooling or during the development of graduate thesis, in order to determine the causes or problems that arise during the pursuit of the studies. Very encouraging results were obtained on the causes of the dropout of the master's degree program, which discover the autonomous cycles

Learning analytics: challenges and limitations

Learning analytic implementations are increasingly being included in learning management systems in higher education. We lay out some concerns with the way learning analytics – both data and algorithms – are often presented within an unproblematized Big Data discourse. We describe some potential problems with the often implicit assumptions about learning and learners – and indeed the tendency not to theorize learning explicitly – that underpin such implementations. Finally, we describe an attempt to devise our own analytics, grounded in a sociomaterial conception of learning. We use the data obtained to suggest that the relationships between learning and the digital traces left by participants in online learning are far from trivial, and that any analytics that relies on these as proxies for learning tends towards a behaviourist evaluation of learning processes

Supporting team based learning using electronic laboratory notebooks: perspectives from transnational students

Today’s engineering industries require graduates with a broad range of soft skills, which include teamwork, communication and integrity. Therefore, more accreditation bodies now recommend team-learning activities to be embedded in their engineering programmes. However, hardworking students often find group projects demotivating, especially if their contributions are not accurately reflected in their individual grades. To address these issues, we demonstrate that Electronic Laboratory Notebooks can be used to promote student collaboration and teamwork on a group project. They can also help instructors assess student contributions fairly. During our investigations, we noticed that students have used Electronic Laboratory Notebooks as social interaction tools that enable text, data, images and recorded audio to be exchanged. Consequently, the aim of this manuscript is to describe the experiences of 58 transnational undergraduate students in using six different software products for a team-based learning activity. According to our investigations, Electronic Laboratory Notebooks had a positive impact on supporting Team Based Learning in a new electronic engineering course. The outcomes of our investigations can help create effective teaching and learning resources for undergraduate students in Electronic Engineering. They can also help engineering faculty make informed decisions regarding the introduction of Electronic Laboratory Notebooks in undergraduate research activities

Evaluación cuantitativa de la adquisición de la competencia de trabajo en equipo mediante la metodología CTMTC

Mención honorífica 2017[ES] La adquisición por los estudiantes de la competencia de trabajo en equipo (TE de aquí en adelante) se considera un aspecto fundamental en la formación de los individuos que ha llevado a su inclusión en los programas de la mayor parte de los grados de las universidades españolas. Esto se debe principalmente a dos razones: 1) El aprendizaje del estudiante se ve mejorado cuando este se lleva a cabo en grupo; de hecho compartir y debatir información en grupo facilita que los estudiantes construyan modelos mentales y por tanto conocimiento conjunto (Leidner & Jarvenpaa, 1995; Vogel, Davison, & Shroff, 2001); y 2) La competencia TE es algo muy apreciado en el ámbito laboral, ya que las instituciones buscan cooperación entre sus miembros para conseguir objetivos comunes (Iglesias-Pradas, Ruiz-de-Azcárate, & Agudo-Peregrina, 2015). Estas razones han hecho que la adquisición de la competencia TE sea algo especialmente tenido en cuenta en contextos educativos, como demuestra que sea una evidencia considerada por programas de evaluación de la calidad como ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) (ABET, 2013) o por la ANECA en sus programas de acreditación del profesorado (ANECA, 2015)