Using Learning Management Systems to Support Students' Collaborative Learning in Higher Education

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are web-based systems for the distribution, management and retrieval of course materials, and to support communication between students and instructors. A LMS can also support peer collaboration by providing students with the capacity to create their own project sites. In this paper we present data from system logs, surveys, and interviews to investigate how one such system, CTools, is used by students at a large public university to facilitate peer learning.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108483/1/CSCL_2007_Project_Sites.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108483/2/CSCL_2007_Project_Sites_Poster.pdfDescription of CSCL_2007_Project_Sites.pdf : Main articleDescription of CSCL_2007_Project_Sites_Poster.pdf : Poster Fil

Students’ interpersonal connections with peers and staff at the start of higher education

Establishing positive social relationships is important for students’ success and retention in higher education (HE). This can be especially challenging during the transition into HE since students often move to a larger educational setting and need to build relationships with new peers and staff. Research is needed to better understand social connections during this critical time, including the role of demographics, curricular and extracurricular participation, and how peer and staff connections predict academic achievement. Surveys of 290 first-year students at a large US public university assessed with whom students were interacting, how often, for what reasons, and with what modes of communication. Results include a detailed description of students’ interpersonal connections at the transition into HE, differences by demographics, curricular, and extracurricular participation, and the associations between students’ patterns of relationships and their academic achievement

Supporting the Dissertation Process with Grad Tools

Heavy use of an online collaboration and learning environment (CLE) at a large research university led the graduate school to consider how a CLE might support dissertation committees. The project team conducted focus groups with 38 student, faculty, and administrative staff to determine system requirements. Results showed that users would benefit from a tool designed to facilitate the dissertation process, especially if social norms and work-benefit disparity issues were directly addressed. The development team designed and built a "dissertation navigator" in our CLE. 645 users have adopted Grad Tools, suggesting that some traditional groupware design challenges have been overcome.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108481/1/p144-lotia.pdfDescription of p144-lotia.pdf : Main articl

What Happens to the Scores? The Effects of Learning Management Systems Use on Students' Course Evaluations

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are web-based systems that allow instructors and/or students to share materials, submit and return assignments, and communicate online. In this study, we explored the possible effects of LMS use on students' assessments of courses, instructor effectiveness, and their own learning. We examined the relationship between instructors' LMS use over two academic terms and three items from students’ course evaluations, and used the results from a user survey to inform our understanding of the relationship between course ratings and LMS use. Findings suggest that students do not rate courses more highly when instructors use LMSs. However, survey data shows that students value LMSs but perhaps for reasons different from instructors’. As instructors gain experience with tools within LMSs that foster interaction outside the classroom, their use of these systems may lead to improvements in course evaluation scores.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108482/1/AERA_2007_Eval_Paper.pd

Cultivating Institutional Capacities for Learning Analytics

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138371/1/he20243.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138371/2/he20243_am.pd

Increasing Academic Success in Undergraduate Engineering Education using Learning Analytics: A Design-Based Research Project

This paper describes the first iteration of a design-based research project that developed an early warning system (EWS) for an undergraduate engineering mentoring program. Using near real-time data from a university’s learning management system, we provided academic mentors with timely and targeted data on students’ developing academic progress. Over two design phases, we developed an EWS and examined how mentors used the EWS in their support activities. Findings from this iteration of the project point to the importance of locating analytics-based interventions within and across multiple activity systems that link mentors’ interactions with an EWS and their interventions with students.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106032/1/aera2012_krumm_learning_analytics.pd

Learning Analytics and iSchools: What, Why, & Worries

This SIE is aimed at members of the iSchool community who are interested in learning about Learning Analytics (LA) and thinking through how this arena for Big Data is relevant to the intellectual agenda(s) undertaken by iSchools. We expect that attendees will leave the session with an understanding of what learning analytics is, why LA is relevant to iSchools, and how we can design structures that support the ethical use of these tools. We will reach the broader conference community by designing the SIE to be spread over two days where the participants will query other conference colleagues between the two sessions and report back at the second session. The activity between sessions will be based on ethical scenarios described below supported by simple and specific tasks that participants will be given.ye