The Virtual Tutor: Combining Conversational Agents with Learning Analytics to support Formative Assessment in Online Collaborative Learning

The objective of this design science research project is to combine Learning Analytics data with a conversational agent communication interface, the Virtual Tutor, which is able to support formative assessment for educators and learners in online collaborative learning (OCL) environments. The main benefit for educators is providing user-adaptable Learning Analytics data requests to fit the information needs for formative assessment. Learners receive semi-automated feedback on their platform activity in form of reports, which shall trigger self-reflection processes. By extracting requirements from the potential users and deriving design principles, a conversational agent is implemented and evaluated in an online collaborative learning course. The results indicate that the Virtual Tutor reduces the task load of educators, supports formative assessment and gives scaffolded guidance to the learners by reflecting their performance, thus triggering self-reflection processes. This research provides a first step towards data supported (semi-)automated feedback systems for formative assessment in OCL courses

Recommending insightful drill-downs based on learning processes for learning analytics dashboards

Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs) make use of rich and complex data about students and their learning activities to assist educators in understanding and making informed decisions about student learning and the design and improvement of learning processes. With the increase in the volume, velocity, variety and veracity of data on students, manual navigation and sense-making of such multi-dimensional data have become challenging. This paper proposes an analytical approach to assist LAD users with navigating the large set of possible drill-down actions to identify insights about learning behaviours of the sub-cohorts. A distinctive feature of the proposed approach is that it takes a process mining lens to examine and compare students’ learning behaviours. The process oriented approach considers the flow and frequency of the sequences of performed learning activities, which is increasingly recognised as essential for understanding and optimising learning. We present results from an application of our approach in an existing LAD using a course with 875 students, with high demographic and educational diversity. We demonstrate the insights the approach enables, exploring how the learning behaviour of an identified sub-cohort differs from the remaining students and how the derived insights can be used by instructors

Supporting engagement in active video watching using quality nudges and visualisations

Learning by watching videos has been a popular method in e-learning. However, developing and maintaining constructive engagement is a crucial challenge in video-based learning (VBL). AVW-Space is an online VBL platform that enhances student engagement by providing note- taking and peer-reviewing. Previous studies with AVW-Space showed higher learning outcomes for students who write high-quality comments. Furthermore, an earlier study on AVW-Space suggested that visualising the student progress could help learners monitor and regulate their learning. Thus, this research aimed to increase engagement in AVW-Space by offering 1) personalised prompts, named Quality nudges, to encourage writing better comments and 2) visualisations of the student model to facilitate monitoring and controlling learning. I conducted a series of studies to investigate the effectiveness of Quality nudges and visualisations on the students’ engagement and learning. Firstly, I automated the assessment of comments quality using machine learning approaches. Then, I developed Quality nudges which encourage students to write better comments by triggering critical thinking and self-reflection. Next, I conducted a study in the context of presentation skills to analyse the effectiveness of the Quality nudges. The results showed that Quality nudges improved the quality of comments and increased learning consequently. After adding new visual learning analytics to AVW- Space, I investigated the effectiveness of the visualisations by conducting another study in the context of presentation skills. The results showed that the visualisations enhanced constructive engagement and learning even further. I also investigated the generalisability of nudges and visualisation for another transferable skill by making Quality nudges and visualisations customisable and conducting a study in the context of communication skills. Although the results showed that students used visualisations and nudges for communication skills differently from the participants in the study on presentation skills, findings indicated these interventions were still effective in increasing the quality of comments and enhancing constructive behaviour and learning. This research contributes to the development of intelligent learning environments which provide personalised interventions to encourage constructive commenting behaviours during video-based learning. The interventions proposed in this research can be applied to other domains which involve critical thinking and self-reflection. Another contribution of this research is providing visual learning analytics for students in VBL platforms to increase learning awareness and engagement. The nudges and visualisations proposed in this research could be applied to any other video-based learning platform that allows commenting