Group Admins
Description
Session Description
Learner Dashboards are of growing significance in the HE sector: the New Media Consortium, with its worldwide reach and remit for identifying emergent technologies, has repeatedly noted this potential (Johnson et al. 2014; Johnson et al. 2015; Johnson et al. 2016). While in the UK, Jisc has promoted the use of learner analytics as a way to bring about improved student outcomes (Sclater and Mullen 2017) and significantly only one UK HEI has a fully implemented learning analytic solution although many institutions are intending to develop their use of learning analytics (Newland & Trueman 2017).
This workshop applies the findings of a study, funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education, to offer participants a research informed understanding of how students responded to seeing data about their learning behaviours presented via a learner dashboard.
We introduce some criteria for evaluating dashboard elements (sense making, customisability, actionable insights and educational alliance) based on our research findings and show how these criteria account for students’ dispositions (James 2014) and agency (Knox 2017). Thus we argue that these criteria enable a student centred critical response to learner dashboards which might help to inform institutions adoption of this nascent technology.
The workshop will be particularly relevant to those responsible for developing institutional implementations of learner dashboards including senior leaders and those responsible for implementing dashboard solutions with students.
Session content: evaluation and reflection
Session aims:
• To develop a research informed understanding of how individual students respond to learner dashboards
• To relate this understanding to the type of dashboard elements provided on a learner dashboard in order to be able to inform developments in the participants’ particular context.
Session plan:
15 mins Introduction: what is a learner dashboard, what sorts of elements do they contain, introduce our study, introduction to the activity:
20 mins Activity: participants work in pairs. Each pair is given 9 dashboard elements (VLE usage, library usage, attendance, on track score, course summary, feelings word cloud, emoticons, assignment performance (graphical and narrative) and 4 student profiles. They analyse the response to the dashboard elements considering how the learner profiles might have an impact on the response. They rate the elements from liked most to liked least in Mentimeter (96 39 37).
10 mins Present their responses via Mentimeter. Explain dimensions of students’ responses to dashboard elements (sense making, educational alliance, actionable insights, customisable).
15 mins Conclusions: dashboard literacy and self-regulated learning.
References
James, D. (2014). Investigating the curriculum through assessment practice in higher education: the value of a ‘learning cultures’ approach. Higher Education, 67(2), 155-169. doi:10.1007/s10734-013-9652-6
Jivet, I., Scheffel, M., Drachsler, H., & Specht, M. (2017). Awareness is not enough. Pitfalls of learning analytics dashboards in the educational practice. In E. Lavoué, H. Drachsler, K. Verbert, J. Broisin, & M. Pérez-Sanagustín (Eds.), Data Driven Approaches in Digital Education. EC-TEL 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 10474). Cham: Springer. Retrieved from http://dspace.ou.nl/bitstream/1820/7985/1/115_ECTEL_preprint.pdf. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66610-5_7
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., & Hall, C. (2016). New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved from Austin, Texas: http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-technology-outlook-australian-tertiary-education.pdf
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., & Freeman, A. (2014). New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Retrieved from Austin Texas: http://redarchive.nmc.org/publications/2014-horizon-report-higher-ed
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., & Hall, C. (2015). NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education: A Horizon Project Regional Report. . Retrieved from Austin, Texas: http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-technology-outlook-australian-tertiary-education.pdf
Newland, B., & Trueman, P. (2017). Learning Analytics in UK HE 2017: A HeLF Survey Report. Retrieved from https://helfuk.blogspot.co.uk/p/research.html
Sclater, N., & Mullan, J. (2017). Jisc Briefing Learning analytics and student success – assessing the evidence. Retrieved from http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/6560/1/learning-analytics_and_student_success.pdf
Sutton, P. (2012). Conceptualizing feedback literacy: knowing, being, and acting. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 49(1), 31-40. doi:10.1080/14703297.2012.647781
Resources for participants
Bennett, L. (2017). Students’ learning responses to dashboards Final Report. Retrieved from Society for Research in Higher Education: https://www.srhe.ac.uk/research/completed_reports_archive.asp
