The field of learning design studies how to support teachers in devising suitable activities for their students to learn. The field of learning analytics explores how data about students' interactions can be used to increase the understanding of learning experiences. Despite its clear synergy, there is only limited and fragmented work exploring the active role that data analytics can play in supporting design for learning. This paper builds on previous research to propose a framework (analytics layers for learning design) that articulates three layers of data analytics-learning analytics, design analytics and community analytics-to support informed decision-making in learning design. Additionally, a set of tools and experiences are described to illustrate how the different data analytics perspectives proposed by the framework can support learning design processes.
During the last decades, educational contexts have transformed into complex technological and social ecologies, with mobile devices expanding the scope of education beyond the traditional classroom, creating so-called Ubiquitous Learning Environments (ULEs). However, these new technological opportunities entail an additional burden for teachers, who need to manage and coordinate the resources involved in such complex educational scenarios in a process known as "orchestration". This paper presents the evaluation of the orchestration support provided by GLUEPS-AR, a system aimed to help teachers in the coordination of across-spaces learning situations carried out in ULEs. The evaluation, following an interpretive research perspective, relied on a study where a pre-service teacher designed and enacted an authentic across-spaces learning situation in a primary school. The situation, which illustrates the orchestration challenges of ULEs, was aimed at fostering orienteering skills. It spanned five sessions taking place in the classroom, in the school's playground and at a nearby park, using multiple technologies and devices. The evaluation showed that GLUEPS-AR helped the teacher in the multiple aspects of orchestration, including implementation of his pedagogical ideas, adaptation in runtime, and sharing of orchestration load with students. Teacher awareness during outdoor activities was the main aspect to improve upon.
Although MOOCs are being established as a very popular technology to support learning, they are often criticized for their lack of support to active pedagogies and the high drop-out rates. One approach to face this problem is gamification, due to the promising benefits already shown at small-scale environments. Attending to the current and growing use of game elements in MOOCs, this paper presents a systematic literature review of the usage of gamification in MOOCs, aimed at analyzing how gamification is being implemented in MOOCs, and to identify unexplored research opportunities in this field. The results show that gamification is still at an early stage in MOOCs, and it is being implemented in similar ways to those at small scale contexts.
Despite the educational affordances that ubiquitous learning has shown, it is still hampered by several orchestration difficulties. One of these difficulties is that teachers lose awareness of what the students perform across the multiple technologies and spaces involved. Monitoring can help in such awareness, and it has been highly explored in face-to-face and blended learning. Nevertheless, in ubiquitous learning environments monitoring has been usually limited to activities taking place in a specific type of space (e.g., outdoors). In this paper we propose a monitoring system for ubiquitous learning, which was evaluated in three authentic studies, supporting the participants in the affordable monitoring of learning situations involving web, augmented-physical, and 3D virtual world spaces. The work carried out also helped identify a set of guidelines, which are expected to be useful for researchers and technology developers aiming to provide participants' support in ubiquitous learning environments.
Despite the advantages of MOOCs, such as the open and free access to education, these courses are criticized for students' lack of motivation and their high dropout rates. Gamification is a technique used to increase student motivation and engagement in smallscale educational contexts. However, the effects of gamification on student engagement have been scarcely explored in MOOC environments, and the findings so far are inconsistent. To address this gap, this research work examines the students' behavior towards earning badges and how it relates to their engagement in a gamified MOOC. According to the results, the behaviors towards badges of the active students were generally positive and significantly correlated with other variables measuring their engagement (e.g., pageviews, submitted tasks, forum posts), although this positive behavior seems to decrease throughout the course. Additionally, students that reported high motivation by badges at the end of the course showed a higher engagement level than those that were not appealed by badges.
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