Sensemaking with learning analytics visualizations: Investigating dashboard comprehension and effects on learning strategy

In the provision of just-in-time feedback, student-facing learning analytics dashboards (LADs) are meant to aid decision-making during the process of learning. Unlike summative feedback received at its conclusion, this formative feedback may help learners pivot their learning strategies while still engaged in the learning activity. To turn this feedback into actionable insights however, learners must understand LADs well enough to make accurate judgements of learning with them. For these learners, LADs could become an integral part of their self-regulatory learning strategy. This dissertation presents a multifaceted examination of learners’ sensemaking processes with LADs designed to support self-regulatory learning. The in-situ studies detailed therein examine learners’ understanding of the data visualized in LADs and the effects of this understanding on their performance-related mental models. Trace data, surveys, semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews, and retrospective cued recall methods were used to identify why, when, and how learners used LADs to guide their learning. Learners’ qualitative accounts of their experience explained and contextualized the quantitative data collected from the observed activities. Learners preferred less complex LADs, finding them more useful and aesthetically appealing, despite lower gist recall with simpler visualizations. During an early investigation of how LADs were used to make learning judgments in situ, we observed learners’ tendency to act upon brief LAD interactions. This inspired us to operationalize gist as a form of measurement, describing learners’ ability to make sense of a LAD after a brief visual interrogation. Subsequent comparisons of the accuracy and descriptiveness of learners’ gist estimates to those of laypeople repeatedly showed that laypeople were more apt than learners to produce accurate and complete gist descriptions. This dissertation culminates in a final study examining the evolution of learners’ mental models of their performance due to repeated LAD interaction, followed by a discussion of the contextual factors that contributed to what was observed. Trends observed across this work suggest that learners were more apt to “get the gist” with LAD after repeated interaction. This dissertation contributes a novel method for evaluating learners’ interpretation of LADs, while our findings offer insight into how LADs shape learners’ sensemaking processes

Journalism 3.0: Multidimensional Cluster Visualization and Labelling on Twitter Data for Data Journalism

A tese pretende auxiliar o processo jornalístico de descobrimento de notícias com recurso à rede de micro-blogging Twitter. Esta pretende continuar o desenvolvimento da ferramenta TweeProfiles, um consumidor da stream de tweets com posterior descoberta de padrões usando clustering. Para tal, são realizadas tarefas com o objetivo de entender o negócio e de modificar a ferramenta, front-end e back-end, de acordo com o conhecimento obtido. O conhecimento do processo jornalístico é obtido através de reuniões, sessões de inquéritos e testes de usabilidade realizados com o auxílio da equipa do JPN, JornalismoPortoNet. A ferramenta é modificada em front-end pelas respostas recebidas a propostas de caso de uso e sugestões. O back-end é modificado com a adição da tarefa de extração de tópicos realizada nos tweets obtidos, para sumarização de texto

Integrating Network Analysis and Data Mining Techniques into Effective Framework for Web Mining and Recommendation. A Framework for Web Mining and Recommendation

The main motivation for the study described in this dissertation is to benefit from the development in technology and the huge amount of available data which can be easily captured, stored and maintained electronically. We concentrate on Web usage (i.e., log) mining and Web structure mining. Analysing Web log data will reveal valuable feedback reflecting how effective the current structure of a web site is and to help the owner of a web site in understanding the behaviour of the web site visitors. We developed a framework that integrates statistical analysis, frequent pattern mining, clustering, classification and network construction and analysis. We concentrated on the statistical data related to the visitors and how they surf and pass through the various pages of a given web site to land at some target pages. Further, the frequent pattern mining technique was used to study the relationship between the various pages constituting a given web site. Clustering is used to study the similarity of users and pages. Classification suggests a target class for a given new entity by comparing the characteristics of the new entity to those of the known classes. Network construction and analysis is also employed to identify and investigate the links between the various pages constituting a Web site by constructing a network based on the frequency of access to the Web pages such that pages get linked in the network if they are identified in the result of the frequent pattern mining process as frequently accessed together. The knowledge discovered by analysing a web site and its related data should be considered valuable for online shoppers and commercial web site owners. Benefitting from the outcome of the study, a recommendation system was developed to suggest pages to visitors based on their profiles as compared to similar profiles of other visitors. The conducted experiments using popular datasets demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework for Web mining and recommendation. As a by product of the proposed method, we demonstrate how it is effective in another domain for feature reduction by concentrating on gene expression data analysis as an application with some interesting results reported in Chapter 5

Building human capital for the tourism sector : a case study from Yemen

This thesis examines how investing in tourism education was explored as an attractive national development policy in Yemen, where this education would provide the human capital needed for the sector to grow. This examination adopted a dual lens, namely the lens of policy makers responsible for the creation of this educational process as well as that of the students involved. The underlying thought for this research can be summed up in the simple notion: How successful is an educational institution in creating human capital for the tourism sector as seen by both the policymakers and the young people engaged? Responding to this question requires considering the intended goals of both policymakers and students, seen as to accelerate national development and individual wellbeing respectively. Investigating this question is important, particularly given Yemen’s developmental status as a Least Developed Country (LDC) experiencing recurrent cycles of instability, and based on the human capital premise that investing in education contributes positively to achieving development outcomes across the board. For this research, I used a purpose-built vocational training institute as a case study to understand more about how tourism education as an instrument to achieve development goals was understood, formulated, and executed. I relied on official documentation as well as primary data collected through interviews and focus group discussions to build the case study. Those interviewed included high-level officials and other experts as key informants, as well as students who were also engaged through in-depth focus group discussions. The collection of primary data from students enrolled in the institution was useful not only in understanding their perceptions towards the human capital development process through the institution, but also to learn more about issues that potentially contributed to the frustrations that were expressed in the Arab spring events of 2011. My research indicated that the conceptual framework used to guide policymaking in the case of NAHOTI was rather under informed and missed several important elements, thereby limiting the contributions of tourism education to development goals as intended. For example, an evaluation of evidence-based policy options was largely absent, and the process excluded taking into account the views and priorities of the young people despite their central role and contributions to the success of this process. This led to a range of complications that affected the viability of tourism education as a development instrument as evident in the case study. Furthermore, the research revealed another dynamics relating to expectations on returns to investment in education at both the public and private levels. For instance, the students’ expectations from the case study institution were based on their employability interests towards improving their economic prospects, and therefore they viewed the educational process in the institution largely as a means to an end in terms of improving their access to the labour market. This did not only affect their potential contributions to the tourism sector, but also added to their frustrations and disenfranchisement with governance processes at large. Finally, this research concludes with a number of findings and policy implications for the prospects of investing in human capital for development. It also proposes a range of recommendations to maximising the potential contributions of students in building human capital, through adopting a number of participatory and inclusive social dialogue measures within human capital development frameworks

Building human capital for the tourism sector : a case study from Yemen

This thesis examines how investing in tourism education was explored as an attractive national development policy in Yemen, where this education would provide the human capital needed for the sector to grow. This examination adopted a dual lens, namely the lens of policy makers responsible for the creation of this educational process as well as that of the students involved. The underlying thought for this research can be summed up in the simple notion: How successful is an educational institution in creating human capital for the tourism sector as seen by both the policymakers and the young people engaged? Responding to this question requires considering the intended goals of both policymakers and students, seen as to accelerate national development and individual wellbeing respectively. Investigating this question is important, particularly given Yemen’s developmental status as a Least Developed Country (LDC) experiencing recurrent cycles of instability, and based on the human capital premise that investing in education contributes positively to achieving development outcomes across the board. For this research, I used a purpose-built vocational training institute as a case study to understand more about how tourism education as an instrument to achieve development goals was understood, formulated, and executed. I relied on official documentation as well as primary data collected through interviews and focus group discussions to build the case study. Those interviewed included high-level officials and other experts as key informants, as well as students who were also engaged through in-depth focus group discussions. The collection of primary data from students enrolled in the institution was useful not only in understanding their perceptions towards the human capital development process through the institution, but also to learn more about issues that potentially contributed to the frustrations that were expressed in the Arab spring events of 2011. My research indicated that the conceptual framework used to guide policymaking in the case of NAHOTI was rather under informed and missed several important elements, thereby limiting the contributions of tourism education to development goals as intended. For example, an evaluation of evidence-based policy options was largely absent, and the process excluded taking into account the views and priorities of the young people despite their central role and contributions to the success of this process. This led to a range of complications that affected the viability of tourism education as a development instrument as evident in the case study. Furthermore, the research revealed another dynamics relating to expectations on returns to investment in education at both the public and private levels. For instance, the students’ expectations from the case study institution were based on their employability interests towards improving their economic prospects, and therefore they viewed the educational process in the institution largely as a means to an end in terms of improving their access to the labour market. This did not only affect their potential contributions to the tourism sector, but also added to their frustrations and disenfranchisement with governance processes at large. Finally, this research concludes with a number of findings and policy implications for the prospects of investing in human capital for development. It also proposes a range of recommendations to maximising the potential contributions of students in building human capital, through adopting a number of participatory and inclusive social dialogue measures within human capital development frameworks