Engagement is an integral part of learning. Learning is likely to happen only if students are engaged in learning activities. When students are engaged, they exhibit behaviors that lead to learning. These actions might be observable (behavioral engagement, such as raising a hand) or unobservable (cognitive engagement, such as developing a solution to a problem). Moreover, student engagement is not likely to stay constant and may increase or decrease over time.
Online discussion forums and question&answer tools have been used a great deal in education. In these environments, students engage in learning by interacting with peers and exchanging information with each other in an asynchronous manner, while every student actions are automatically recorded in an online database. In other words, the online learning technologies provide the possibility of keeping track of student interactions with such details as time and frequency, which is not easy to achieve in classroom settings. However, the large sets of raw data of online student interactions can not be easily read by a teacher (or a researcher) to make meaningful and complete observations regarding the change in student engagement.
Thus, I am interested in the visualization of student interactions in an online environment, called EchoLu. EchoLu is an online learning tool developed by me to assist students in seeking help from peers. I am planning to develop a visualization component to EchoLu. As students interact in EchoLu, the visualizations will be available dynamically at any time. The visualizations will show the change in student engagement in individual and class levell. I believe that this will help the teacher to examine the patterns in student engagement throughout the course. Additionally, it will be a research tool for me to investigate how student engagement changes over time depending on the pre-defined posting due dates, and how student achievement goals play a role in this change.
Hope to have more details with some visuals next time!
Erkan
Online discussion forums and question&answer tools have been used a great deal in education. In these environments, students engage in learning by interacting with peers and exchanging information with each other in an asynchronous manner, while every student actions are automatically recorded in an online database. In other words, the online learning technologies provide the possibility of keeping track of student interactions with such details as time and frequency, which is not easy to achieve in classroom settings. However, the large sets of raw data of online student interactions can not be easily read by a teacher (or a researcher) to make meaningful and complete observations regarding the change in student engagement.
Thus, I am interested in the visualization of student interactions in an online environment, called EchoLu. EchoLu is an online learning tool developed by me to assist students in seeking help from peers. I am planning to develop a visualization component to EchoLu. As students interact in EchoLu, the visualizations will be available dynamically at any time. The visualizations will show the change in student engagement in individual and class levell. I believe that this will help the teacher to examine the patterns in student engagement throughout the course. Additionally, it will be a research tool for me to investigate how student engagement changes over time depending on the pre-defined posting due dates, and how student achievement goals play a role in this change.
Hope to have more details with some visuals next time!
Erkan
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