Learning Analytics Methods And Tutorials

This open access comprehensive methodological book offers a much-needed answer to the lack of resources and methodological guidance in learning analytics, which has been a problem ever since the field started. The book covers all important quantitative topics in education at large as well as the latest in learning analytics and education data mining. The book also goes deeper into advanced methods that are at the forefront of novel methodological innovations. Authors of the book include world-renowned learning analytics researchers, R package developers, and methodological experts from diverse fields offering an unprecedented interdisciplinary reference on novel topics that is hard to find elsewhere. The book starts with the basics of R as a programming language, the basics of data cleaning, data manipulation, statistics, and analytics. In doing so, the book is suitable for newcomers as they can find an easy entry to the field, as well as being comprehensive of all the major methodologies. For every method, the corresponding chapter starts with the basics, explains the main concepts, and reviews examples from the literature. Every chapter has a detailed explanation of the essential techniques and basic functions combined with code and a full tutorial of the analysis with open-access real-life data. A total of 22 chapters are included in the book covering a wide range of methods such as predictive learning analytics, network analysis, temporal networks, epistemic networks, sequence analysis, process mining, factor analysis, structural topic modeling, clustering, longitudinal analysis, and Markov models. What is really unique about the book is that researchers can perform the most advanced analysis with the included code using the step-by-step tutorial and the included data without the need for any extra resources. This is an open access book.

In education today, technology alone doesn't always lead to immediate success for students or institutions. In order to gauge the efficacy of educational technology, we need ways to measure the efficacy of educational practices in their own right. Through a better understanding of how learning takes place, we may work toward establishing best practices for students, educators, and institutions. These goals can be accomplished with learning analytics. Learning Analytics: From Research to Practice updates this emerging field with the latest in theories, findings, strategies, and tools from across education and technological disciplines. Guiding readers through preparation, design, and examples of implementation, this pioneering reference clarifies LA methods as not mere data collection but sophisticated, systems-based analysis with practical applicability inside the classroom and in the larger world. Case studies illustrate applications of LA throughout academic settings (e.g., intervention, advisement, technology design), and their resulting impact on pedagogy and learning. The goal is to bring greater efficiency and deeper engagement to individual students, learning communities, and educators, as chapters show diverse uses of learning analytics to: Enhance student and faculty performance. Improve student understanding of course material. Assess and attend to the needs of struggling learners. Improve accuracy in grading. Allow instructors to assess and develop their own strengths. Encourage more efficient use of resources at the institutional level. Researchers and practitioners in educational technology, IT, and the learning sciences will hail the information in Learning Analytics: From Research to Practice as a springboard to new levels of student, instructor, and institutional success.

This book A Beginner’s Guide to Learning Analytics is designed to meet modern educational trends’ needs. It is addressed to readers who have no prior knowledge of learning analytics and functions as an introductory text to learning analytics for those who want to do more with evaluation/assessment in their organizations. The book is useful to all who need to evaluate their learning and teaching strategies. It aims to bring greater efficiency and deeper engagement to individual students, learning communities, and educators. Covered here are the key concepts linked to learning analytics for researchers and practitioners interested in learning analytics. This book helps those who want to apply analytics to learning and development programs and helps educational institutions to identify learners who require support and provide a more personalized learning experience. Like chapters show diverse uses of learning analytics to enhance student and faculty performance. It presents a coherent framework for the effective translation of learning analytics research for educational practice to its practical application in different educational domains. This book provides educators and researchers with the tools and frameworks to effectively make sense of and use data and analytics in their everyday practice. This book will be a valuable addition to researchers’ bookshelves.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction by an extraordinary range of experts to the recent and rapidly developing field of learning analytics. Some of the finest current thinkers about ways to interpret and benefit from the increasing amount of evidence from learners’ experiences have taken time to explain their methods, describe examples, and point out new underpinnings for the field. Together, they show how this new field has the potential to dramatically increase learner success through deeper understanding of the academic, social-emotional, motivational, identity and meta-cognitive context each learner uniquely brings. Learning analytics is much more than “analyzing learning data”—it is about deeply understanding what learning activities work well, for whom, and when. Learning Analytics in Education provides an essential framework, as well as guidance and examples, for a wide range of professionals interested in the future of learning. If you are already involved in learning analytics, or otherwise trying to use an increasing density of evidence to understand learners’ progress, these leading thinkers in the field may give you new insights. If you are engaged in teaching at any level, or training future teachers/faculty for this new, increasingly technology-enhanced learning world, and want some sense of the potential opportunities (and pitfalls) of what technology can bring to your teaching and students, these forward-thinking leaders can spark your imagination. If you are involved in research around uses of technology, improving learning measurements, better ways to use evidence to improve learning, or in more deeply understanding human learning itself, you will find additional ideas and insights from some of the best thinkers in the field here. If you are involved in making administrative or policy decisions about learning, you will find new ideas (and dilemmas) coming your way from inevitable changes in how we design and deliver instruction, how we measure the outcomes, and how we provide feedback to students, teachers, developers, administrators, and policy-makers. For all these players, the trick will be to get the most out of all the new developments to efficiently and effectively improve learning performance, without getting distracted by “shiny” technologies that are disconnected from how human learning and development actually work.

Addresses the impacts of data mining on education and reviews applications in educational research teaching, and learning This book discusses the insights, challenges, issues, expectations, and practical implementation of data mining (DM) within educational mandates. Initial series of chapters offer a general overview of DM, Learning Analytics (LA), and data collection models in the context of educational research, while also defining and discussing data mining’s four guiding principles— prediction, clustering, rule association, and outlier detection. The next series of chapters showcase the pedagogical applications of Educational Data Mining (EDM) and feature case studies drawn from Business, Humanities, Health Sciences, Linguistics, and Physical Sciences education that serve to highlight the successes and some of the limitations of data mining research applications in educational settings. The remaining chapters focus exclusively on EDM’s emerging role in helping to advance educational research—from identifying at-risk students and closing socioeconomic gaps in achievement to aiding in teacher evaluation and facilitating peer conferencing. This book features contributions from international experts in a variety of fields. Includes case studies where data mining techniques have been effectively applied to advance teaching and learning Addresses applications of data mining in educational research, including: social networking and education; policy and legislation in the classroom; and identification of at-risk students Explores Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to study the effectiveness of online networks in promoting learning and understanding the communication patterns among users and students Features supplementary resources including a primer on foundational aspects of educational mining and learning analytics Data Mining and Learning Analytics: Applications in Educational Research is written for both scientists in EDM and educators interested in using and integrating DM and LA to improve education and advance educational research.

Innovative Learning Analytics for Evaluating Instruction covers the application of a forward-thinking research methodology that uses big data to evaluate the effectiveness of online instruction. Analysis of Patterns in Time (APT) is a practical analytic approach that finds meaningful patterns in massive data sets, capturing temporal maps of students’ learning journeys by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Offering conceptual and research overviews, design principles, historical examples, and more, this book demonstrates how APT can yield strong, easily generalizable empirical evidence through big data; help students succeed in their learning journeys; and document the extraordinary effectiveness of First Principles of Instruction. It is an ideal resource for faculty and professionals in instructional design, learning engineering, online learning, program evaluation, and research methods.

This book provides a conceptual and empirical perspective on learning analytics, its goal being to disseminate the core concepts, research, and outcomes of this emergent field. Divided into nine chapters, it offers reviews oriented on selected topics, recent advances, and innovative applications. It presents the broad learning analytics landscape and in-depth studies on higher education, adaptive assessment, teaching and learning. In addition, it discusses valuable approaches to coping with personalization and huge data, as well as conceptual topics and specialized applications that have shaped the current state of the art. By identifying fundamentals, highlighting applications, and pointing out current trends, the book offers an essential overview of learning analytics to enhance learning achievement in diverse educational settings. As such, it represents a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and students interested in updating their knowledge and finding inspirations for their future work.