Feedback authoring for exploratory learning objects: AuthELO

This paper presents a tool for the configuration of logging and authoring of automated feedback for exploratory learning objects (ELOs). This tool has been developed in the context of a larger project that is developing a platform for authoring interactive educational e-books. This platform comprises an extendable set of diverse widgets that can be used to generate instances of exploratory activities that can be employed in various learning scenarios. AuthELO was designed and developed to provide a simple, common and efficient authoring interface that can normalise the heterogeneity of these widgets and give the ability to non-experts to easily modify — if not program themselves — the feedback that is provided to students based on their interaction. We describe the architecture and design characteristics of AuthELO and present a small-scale evaluation of the prototype that shows promising results

Enhanced JavaScript learning using code quality tools and a rule-based system in the FLIP Exploratory Learning Environment

The ‘FLIP Learning’ (Flexible, Intelligent and Personalised Learning) is an Exploratory Learning Environment (ELE) for teaching elementary programming to beginners using JavaScript. This paper presents the subsystem that is used to generate individualised real-time support to students depending on their initial misconceptions. The subsystem is intended to be used primarily in the early stages of student engagement in order to help them overcome the constraints of their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) with minimal assistance from teachers

Towards analytics for educational interactive e-Books: The case of the reflective designer analytics platform (RDAP)

This paper presents an analytics dashboard that has been developed for designers of interactive e-books. This is part of the EU-funded MC Squared project that is developing a platform for authoring interactive educational e-books. The primary objective is to develop technologies and resources that enhance creative thinking for both designers (authors) and learners. The learning material is expected to offer learners opportunities to engage creatively with mathematical problems and develop creative mathematical thinking. The analytics dashboard is designed to increase authors' awareness so that they can make informed decisions on how to redesign and improve the e-books. This paper presents architectural and design decisions on key features of the dashboard and discusses future steps with respect to the potential for exploratory data analysis

Reflective Analytics for Interactive e-books

This paper presents an analytics platform that has been developed for designers and teachers who build and use interactive e-books for learning. The analytics dashboard aims to increase awareness of the use of the e-books so that designers (and teachers in their role as designers) can make informed decisions on how to redesign and improve them taking into account both the overall learning design and the data from their usage. This paper presents architectural and design decisions on key features of the dashboard, and the evaluation of a high-fidelity prototype. We discuss findings related to use of the dashboard for exploratory data analysis and inquiry and how these generalise and can be taken into account by our future work or that of others

Scalable monitoring of student interaction indicators in exploratory learning environments

We present and evaluate a web-based architecture for monitoring student-system interaction indicators in Exploratory Learning Environments (ELEs), using as our case study a microworld for secondary school algebra. We discuss the challenging role of teachers in exploratory learning settings and motivate the need for visualisation and notification tools that can assist teachers in focusing their attention across the class and inform teachers' interventions. We present an architecture that can support such Teacher Assistance tools and demonstrate its scalability to allow concurrent usage by thousands of users (students and teachers)

Communicating learning analytics: Stakeholder participation and early stage requirement analysis

This paper reflects on a user-centered design methodology for requirements elicitation at early stages of a design process for Learning Analytics tools. This methodology may be used as a domain specific instrument to elicit user perspectives about the communicational aspects of learning analytics dashboards. The focus of this work is identifying ways to communicate the data analysis findings in a way that is easily perceptible and facilitates actionable decision making. We present the structure as well as the logic behind the design of this instrument. As a case study, the paper describes an implementation of this methodology in the context of school-wide analytics communicating to stakeholders quality indicators through summarising and visualising data collected through student and parent surveys. We provide high-level and transferable recommendations derived from the analysis of the workshop with key stakeholders and identify future improvements in our methodology

Designing a Mediation Vocabulary for Authoring Learning Analytics

This paper provides a knowledge representation process for authoring of learning experiences that capture feedback designed in the context of learning environments. The paper reports on a year long study with designers who are creating mathematical teaching and learning resources as part of an EU project (M C Squared). In this paper we examine the knowledge representation process we used in design and creation of a mediation vocabulary. The model to be designed has to provide different layers of ‘knowledge integration’ and thus offers insights into the importance of knowledge mediation in the emergence of new learning environments and experiences. Hence, authoring of designs and feedback through use of ontologies to form part of the annotating of the learning activities. The annotations form part of the context to be used as part of the learning analytics