Learning Analytics: Practitioners, Take Note

From its early days, the Learning Analytics community has dedicated considerable efforts to opening communication avenues between researchers and practitioners. As early as 2012, at the Second International Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference (LAK’12), there were Design Briefing submissions dedicated to people who ‘spend more time building learning analytics tools than writing about them’ (LAK12 CFP). Since then, at every LAK conference, design briefings have been assigned a variety of different names but have always co-existed with more traditional, research-oriented submissions. In a similar manner, from its inaugural issue, the Journal of Learning Analytics has included a section, originally called ‘Hot Spots’ and now ‘Practical Reports’, that highlights the work of practitioners in the field. From the start, the objectives of this deliberate mixture have been to inform researchers of the ideas that are successfully applied in educational institutions, and to provide practitioners with a direct connection to fresh, evidence-supported innovations. To facilitate this two-way communication between researchers and practitioners, since 2018 each research paper published in the journal has included a ‘Notes for Practice’ section and, similarly, each practical report begins with a ‘Notes for Research’ section. Within these bullet-pointed sections, authors summarise the main implications of their work for the respective subcommunity, allowing an easier flow of knowledge and ideas between researchers and practitioners. For this editorial, we analysed all ‘Notes for Practice’ published in the journal, from the introduction of this section in issue 5(1) to the issue before this one, 9(2). Our goals were to examine critically the ways in which these notes have been used to foster collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and also to summarise key findings that practitioners can use to inform their work

Narrowing the Feedback Gap : Examining Student Engagement with Personalized and Actionable Feedback Messages

Funding The authors declared no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this articlePeer reviewedPublisher PD

Where is research on massive open online courses headed? A data analysis of the MOOC research initiative

This paper reports on the results of an analysis of the research proposals submitted to the MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) funded by the Gates Foundation and administered by Athabasca University. The goal of MRI was to mobilize researchers to engage into critical interrogation of MOOCs. The submissions – 266 in Phase 1, out of which 78 was recommended for resubmission in the extended form in Phase 2, and finally, 28 funded – were analyzed by applying conventional and automated content analysis methods as well as citation network analysis methods. The results revealed the main research themes that could form a framework of the future MOOC research: i) student engagement and learning success, ii) MOOC design and curriculum, iii) self-regulated learning and social learning, iv) social network analysis and networked learning, and v) motivation, attitude and success criteria. The theme of social learning received the greatest interest and had the highest success in attracting funding. The submissions that planned on using learning analytics methods were more successful. The use of mixed methods was by far the most popular. Design-based research methods were also suggested commonly, but the questions about their applicability arose regarding the feasibility to perform multiple iterations in the MOOC context and rather a limited focus on technological support for interventions. The submissions were dominated by the researchers from the field of education (75% of the accepted proposals). Not only was this a possible cause of a complete lack of success of the educational technology innovation theme, but it could be a worrying sign of the fragmentation in the research community and the need to increased efforts towards enhancing interdisciplinarity

Aligning the Goals of Learning Analytics with its Research Scholarship: An Open Peer Commentary Approach

To promote cross-community dialogue on matters of significance within the field of learning analytics], we as editors-in- chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics have introduced a section for papers that are open to peer commentary. The first of these papers, “A LAK of Direction: Misalignment Between the Goals of Learning Analytics and its Research Scholarship” by Motz et al. (2023), appeared in the journal’s early access section in March 2023, a few days before the start of the 13th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK ’23). “A LAK of Direction” takes as its starting point the definition of learning analytics used in the call for papers of the first LAK conference (LAK ’11) and used since then by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR): “Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Long & Siemens, 2011, p. 24). Following the conference, an invitation to submit proposals for commentaries on the paper was released, and 12 of these proposals were accepted. This paper brings those commentaries togethe

Aligning the Goals of Learning Analytics with its Research Scholarship: An Open Peer Commentary Approach

To promote cross-community dialogue on matters of significance within the field of learning analytics (LA), we as editors-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics (JLA) have introduced a section for papers that are open to peer commentary. An invitation to submit proposals for commentaries on the paper was released, and 12 of these proposals were accepted. The 26 authors of the accepted commentaries are based in Europe, North America, and Australia. They range in experience from PhD students and early-career researchers to some of the longest-standing, most senior members of the learning analytics community. This paper brings those commentaries together, and we recommend reading it as a companion piece to the original paper by Motz et al. (2023), which also appears in this issu

Externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and role assignment to develop cognitive presence in asynchronous online discussions

This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different teaching presence approaches in communities of inquiry, and ways in which student–student online discussions with high levels of cognitive presence can be designed. Specifically, this paper proposes that high-levels of cognitive presence can be facilitated in online courses, based on the community of inquiry model, by building upon existing research in i) self-regulated learning through externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and ii) computer-supported collaborative learning through role assignment. We conducted a quasi-experimental study in a fully-online course (N=82) using six offerings of the course. After performing a quantitative content analysis of online discussion transcripts, a multilevel linear modeling analysis showed the significant positive effects of both externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and role assignment on the level of cognitive presence. Specifically, the results showed that externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding had a higher effect on cognitive presence than extrinsically induced motivation through grades. The results showed the effectiveness of role assignment to facilitate a high-level of cognitive presence. More importantly, the results showed a significant effect of the interaction between externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and role assignment on cognitive presence. The paper concludes with a discussion of practical and theoretical implications.•Externally-facilitated regulated (EFR) learning and role scripts for online discussions•Design-based study conducted in a fully-online master's level course•Multi-level linear modeling showed significant effects of EFR and role scripting.•Motivation needs to be complemented with EFR for high level of cognitive presence.•EFR can offer equitable opportunities for cognitive presence of different roles

Data-driven detection and characterization of communities of accounts collaborating in MOOCs

Collaboration is considered as one of the main drivers of learning and it has been broadly studied across numerous contexts, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The research on MOOCs has risen exponentially during the last years and there have been a number of works focused on studying collaboration. However, these previous studies have been restricted to the analysis of collaboration based on the forum and social interactions, without taking into account other possibilities such as the synchronicity in the interactions with the platform. Therefore, in this work we performed a case study with the goal of implementing a data-driven approach to detect and characterize collaboration in MOOCs. We applied an algorithm to detect synchronicity links based on their submission times to quizzes as an indicator of collaboration, and applied it to data from two large Coursera MOOCs. We found three different profiles of user accounts, that were grouped in couples and larger communities exhibiting different types of associations between user accounts. The characterization of these user accounts suggested that some of them might represent genuine online learning collaborative associations, but that in other cases dishonest behaviors such as free-riding or multiple account cheating might be present. These findings call for additional research on the study of the kind of collaborations that can emerge in online settings