Student success, both during and after college, is central to the mission of higher education. Within the higher-education and, more specifically, the student-success context, the core raison d'être of machine learning (ML) is to help institutions achieve their social mission in an efficient and effective manner. While there should be synergy…

This dissertation is presented in multiple article format with an introduction, a literature review, a design case, a mixed methods study, and a conclusion. The literature review outlines important concepts and theories that appear in subsequent manuscripts. The design case describes the seven-year design process that resulted in the online…

Hands-off data-driven learning is a data-based, student-oriented learning model characterized by inquiry and discovery. English context vocabulary teaching is the key to English teaching in colleges and an important indicator to evaluate the quality and level of college English teaching, which is a language teaching paradigm focusing on the…

The digitalisation and datafication of education has raised profound questions about the changing role of teachers' educational expertise and agency, as automated processes, data-driven analytics and accountability regimes produce new forms of knowledge and governance. Increasingly, research is paying greater attention to the significant role of…

We propose a novel model, Wide & Deep Item Response Theory (Wide & Deep IRT), to predict the correctness of students' responses to questions using historical clickstream data. This model combines the strengths of conventional Item Response Theory (IRT) models and Wide & Deep Learning for Recommender Systems. By leveraging clickstream…

The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has caused significant disruption to the traditional educational teaching ecosystem. GAI possesses remarkable capabilities in generating human-like text and boasts an extensive knowledge repository, thereby paving the way for potential collaboration with humans. However, current research on…

In a higher education context, students are expected to take charge of their learning by deciding "what" to learn and "how" to learn. While the learning analytics (LA) community has seen increasing research on the "how" to learn part (i.e., researching methods for supporting students in their learning journey), the…

E-learning platforms have become increasingly popular in K--8 education to promote student learning and enhance classroom teaching. Student interactions with these platforms produce trace data, which are digital records of learning processes. Although trace data have been effective in identifying learners' engagement profiles in higher education…

For university students, self-regulation of study behaviour is important. However, students are not always capable of effective self-regulation. Providing study behaviour information via a learning analytics dashboard (LAD) may support phases within self-regulated learning (SRL). However, it is unclear what information a LAD should provide, how to…

This study addresses the problems in traditional English literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors, proposing a new teaching approach based on smart education concepts to enhance learning effectiveness. An evaluation of a semester-long reform in teaching methods is conducted using a quantitative methodology. The findings reveal…

This paper presents the first experiences of the use of an online open-source repository with programming exercises. The repository is independent of any specific teaching approach. Students can search for and select an exercise that trains the programming concepts that they want to train and that only uses the programming concepts they already…

Multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) offers the potential to provide evidence-based insights into complex learning phenomena such as collaborative learning. Yet, few MMLA applications have closed the learning analytics loop by being evaluated in real-world educational settings. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an MMLA solution in…

The National College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) is a key test to assess the English language ability of Chinese university students, and the success rate of the test is important to improve the quality of their English learning. Artificial intelligence technology can be used to predict and explore the factors influencing the success rate. This…

This empirical investigation rigorously evaluated the teaching potential of Data-Driven Learning (DDL) for enhancing the ability of learners to apply 30 near-synonymous change-of-state verbs in two EFL Freshman English courses in a college setting across two semesters. In the study, 32 participants in the experimental group and 22 in the control…

The growing use of generative AI (GenAI) has sparked discussions regarding integrating these tools into educational settings to enrich the learning experience of teachers and students. Self-regulated learning (SRL) research is pivotal in addressing this inquiry. One prevalent manifestation of GenAI is the large-language model (LLM) chatbot,…