Stepping out of the box. Toward Learning Analytics outside of the LMS

Abelardo PardoAbelardo Pardo, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos Delgado KloosUniversity Carlos III of Madrid, SpainUniversity Carlos III of Madrid, Spain

Stepping out of the box Toward analytics outside the LMS

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2Abelardo Pardo. Stepping out of the Box. Analytics outside the LMS

Warning: From macro to micro

Apply analytics to everyday operations

in a course.

Toward highly focused quick

actuators

!Micro doesnotmean simple

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The scenario• Second year engineering• Class meets twice a week• Active learning (U work, I

work)1.Learn how to program in C

2.Use “industrial” tools

3.Work in teams

4.Increase your self-learning

• Work in pairs and in teams• Significant out-of-class activity

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The problem

• LMS = Forum

• Intense activity outside LMS.

• Can we record the interaction?

• Can we take measures?

• Can we act over 250 students?

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The solution

• Think as a student

• Offer fully configured environment for the course

• Offer doc. sharing

• Attract course activity to that environment

• Capture, report, predict, act and refine

• Total transparency!

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Virtual Machines• A (guest) computer in a

file (8 Gigabytes)• Runs as a regular

application in your (host) PC

• When in full window, almost as running another operating system

• Access to files in “host” machine

• Available 1st day

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Internals

• Instrumentation of main tools

• Record when tools are used

• Relay data to server when updating shared documents

• Transparent to the user• User confirms terms of use

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Advantages• Closer insight on

procedural activities• Limited to the course

environment• Limited in time• Observe some

“elusive” behavior– Ability to use modern

engineering tools– Ability to function in

multidisciplinary teams

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On-going work

• First data set collected: Sep./Dic. 10. Observed 248 Students

• Used by 85% of them

• Encoded in CAM

• 48K events

• Beginning to report, towards “act”

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Browsing outside the LMS

• 48K events: 15,5K are URLs (32.07%)

• 8,669 unique pages

• 28.51% point to the LMS

• Conclusion: 3 out of 4 pages are outside the LMS.

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Conclusions

• VMs offer a good trade-off for course environment

• Advantages to students

• Potential for high observability

• Oriented toward quick actuators

www.it.uc3m.es/abelTwitter: @abelardopardo