AngeLA: Putting the Teacher in Control of Student Privacy in the Online Classroom

Learning analytics (LA) is often considered as a means to improve learning and learning environments by measuring student behaviour, analysing the tracked data and acting upon the results. The use of LA tools implies recording and processing of student activities conducted on software platforms. This paper proposes a flexible, contextual and intuitive way to provide the teacher with full control over student activity tracking in online learning environments. We call this approach AngeLA, inspired by an angel guarding over LA privacy. AngeLA mimics in a virtual space the privacy control mechanism that works well in a physical room: if a person is present in a room, she is able to observe all activities happening in the room. AngeLA serves two main purposes: (1) it increases the awareness of teachers about the activity tracking and (2) provides an intuitive way to manage the activity tracking permissions. This approach can be applied to various learning environments and social media platforms. We have implemented AngeLA in Graasp, a social platform that fosters collaborative activities

Towards portable learning analytics dashboards

This paper proposes a novel approach to build and deploy learning analytics dashboards in multiple learning environments. Existing learning dashboards are barely portable: once deployed on a learning platform, it requires considerable effort to deploy the dashboard elsewhere. We suggest constructing dashboards from lightweight web applications, namely widgets. Our approach allows to port dashboards with no additional cost between learning environments that implement open specifications (OpenSocial and ActivityStreams) for data access and use widget APIs. We propose to facilitate reuse by sharing the dashboards and widgets via a centralized analytics repository

Towards Mobile Blended Interaction Fostering Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a fundamental skill that all citizens should have. Unfortunately, while beliefs in unfounded claims are pervasive, teaching critical skill is a strenuous task. Digital mobile interaction could potentially support face-to-face teaching to foster critical thinking skills. In this paper, we present a preliminary version of the BaloneyMeter, a mobile app that provides support for teaching critical thinking skills. We report on a case study in a class of 150 students and present an open research question that we plan to address in subsequent work

A Federated Search and Social Recommendation Widget

This paper presents a federated search and social recommen- dation widget. It describes the widget’s interface and the un- derlying social recommendation engine. A preliminary eval- uation of the widget’s usability and usefulness involving 15 subjects is also discussed. The evaluation helped identify us- ability problems that will be addressed prior to the widget’s usage in a real learning context

Graspeo: a Social Media Platform for Knowledge Management in NGOs

Timely access to critical information is crucial for any organization operating in situations of emergency. Deploying an adequate information system tailored to specific organizational needs and matched to the organizational structure is essential. To understand the knowledge management needs of Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the leading NGOs in the humanitarian and medical fields, we conducted in total 145 hours of in-depth interviews. This paper presents three identified key requirements for an effective knowledge management system specifically designed for large distributed NGOs, like MSF. Additionally, we introduce a novel social media called Graspeo designed and built from ground up to fulfill these requirements

SpeakUp in the Classroom: Anonymous Temporary Social Media for Better Interactions

Student participation in class is an important aspect of the learning experience, and can provide valuable feedback for teachers. However, getting students to interact in large classrooms is challenging. This paper presents SpeakUp, a mobile temporary social media app, confined in time and space that aims to improve interactions in classrooms. In SpeakUp, teachers can create temporary chat rooms accessible to students located nearby. Students can then anonymously post messages, which can be rated up or down by others. Our evaluation results (with a class of 300 students over the course of a semester) show that temporary social media can be used as an effective tool to improve classroom interactions by providing: (i) confined classroom-like here & now interactions to foster adoption, (ii) anonymity to increase participation and (iii) social media rating for highlighting interesting content. Students appear to use SpeakUp not solely for asking questions but also as a general backchannel, which can result in spam

The AppComposer Web application for school teachers: A platform for translating and adapting educational web applications

International audienc

Uncomfortable yet Fun Messaging with Chachachat

In order to improve user experience and to foster novel ideas, some voices in the HCI community have argued to break fundamental design rules, an approach well known in the art community. In this paper, we use this radical approach to design a playful mobile chat app called Chachachat, which allows users to send colorful 3-phrase messages from a limited set of phrases taken from dating websites and encourages intimate messaging with strangers with no possibility of meeting offline. We also present a case study of the usage of Chachachat in the wild over a period of six months and discuss ethical issues

Contextual Learning Analytics Apps to Create Awareness in Blended Inquiry Learning

Blended inquiry learning, where students for example use online labs to perform experiments, is considered a promising approach to increase the skills and interest of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains. For teachers to provide adequate guidance to their students, it is critical that they are aware of the progress and difficulties encountered by each student. This can be accomplished through visual learning analytics, namely by tracking student interaction, data analysis and adequate visualisations. To address this awareness issue, we present in this paper a set of contextual learning analytics apps which provide the teacher with learning-specific information. This paper presents a requirement analysis from a summer school with 32 teachers, the design and implementation of three contextual learning analytics apps, the main outcomes from a case study as well as an outlook on future research avenues