Classroom sensing systems can capture data on teacher-student behaviours and interactions at a scale far greater than human observers can. These data, translated to multi-modal analytics, can provide meaningful insights to educational stakeholders. However, complex data can be difficult to make sense of. In addition, analyses done on these data…

This paper describes a partnership-based approach for analyzing data from a learning management system (LMS) used by students in grades 6-12. The goal of the partnership was to create indicators for the ways in which students navigated digital learning activities, referred to as playlists, that were comprised of resources, pre-assessments, and…

In classrooms, some transitions between activities impose (quasi-)synchronicity, meaning there is a need for learners to move between activities at the same time. To make real-time decisions about when to move to the next activity, teachers need to be able to balance the progress of their students as they work at different paces. In this paper, we…

The increased adoption of online learning environments has resulted in the availability of vast amounts of educational log data, which raises questions that could be answered by a thorough and accurate examination of students' online learning behaviours. Event logs describe something that occurred on a platform and provide multiple dimensions that…

This paper outlines the development of practical measures of productive persistence using digital learning system data. Practical measurement refers to data collection and analysis approaches originating from improvement science; productive persistence refers to the combination of academic and social mindsets as well as learning behaviours that…

Learning analytics is an emerging discipline and, as such, benefits from new tools and methodological approaches. This work reviews and summarizes our workshop on microgenetic data analysis techniques using R, held at the second annual Learning Analytics Summer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 30 June 2014. Specifically, this paper…

These pages aim to explain and interpret why the late Mika Seppälä, a conformal geometer, proposed to model student study behaviour using concepts from conformal geometry, such as Riemann surfaces and Strebel differentials. Over many years Mika Seppälä taught online calculus courses to students at Florida State University in the United States, as…

One of the challenges many learning scientists face is the laborious task of coding large amounts of video data and consistently identifying social actions, which is time consuming and difficult to accomplish in a systematic and consistent manner. It is easier to catalog observable behaviours (e.g., body motions or gaze) without explicitly…

Identifying which online behaviours and interactions are associated with student perceptions of being supported will enable a deeper understanding of how those activities contribute to learning experiences. Student language is one aspect of their interaction in need of greater exploration within discourse-based online learning environments. As a…

MOOCs attract a large number of learners with largely unknown diversity in terms of motivation, ability, and goals. To understand more about learners in highly technical engineering MOOCs, this study investigates patterns of learners' (n = 337) behaviour and performance in the Nanophotonic Modelling MOOC, offered through nanoHUB-U. The authors…

This study analyzes the relationship between students' online work habits and academic performance. We utilize data from logs recorded by a course management system (CMS) in two courses at a small liberal arts college in the U.S. Both courses required the completion of a large number of online assignments. We measure three aspects of students'…

This study investigates how multimodal user-generated data can be used to reinforce learner reflection, improve teaching practices, and close the learning analytics loop. In particular, the aim of the study is to utilize user gaze and action-based data to examine the role of a mirroring tool (i.e., Exercise View in Eclipse) in orchestrating basic…

As enrolment in online courses has grown and LMS data has become accessible for analysis, researchers have begun to examine the link between in-course behaviours and course outcomes. This paper explores the use of readily available LMS data generated by approximately 700 students enrolled in the 12 online courses offered by Pamoja Education, the…

We introduce a novel approach to visualizing temporal clickstream behaviour in the context of a degree-satisfying online course, "Habitable Worlds," offered through Arizona State University. The current practice for visualizing behaviour within a digital learning environment is to generate plots based on hand-engineered or coded features…

Engineering design is a complex process both for students to participate in and for instructors to assess. Informed designers use the key strategy of conducting experiments as they test ideas to inform next steps. Conversely, beginning designers experiment less, often with confounding variables. These behaviours are not easy to assess in…