Incorporating non-verbal data streams is essential to understanding the dynamics of interaction within collaborative learning environments in which a variety of verbal and non-verbal modes of communication intersect. However, the complexity of non-verbal data -- especially gathered in the wild from collaborative learning contexts -- demands…

Collaboration has garnered global attention as an important skill for the 21st century. While researchers have been doing work on collaboration for nearly a century, many of the questions that the field is investigating overlook the need for students to learn how to read and respond to different collaborative settings. Existing research focuses on…

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) has become an essential component of today's knowledge-based, innovation-centred economy and society. As such, communication and CPS are now considered critical 21st century skills and incorporated into educational practice, policy, and research. Despite general agreement that these are important skills, there…

Collaboration is a complex, multidimensional process; however, details of how multimodal features intersect and mediate group interactions have not been fully unpacked. Characterizing and analyzing the temporal patterns based on multimodal features is a challenging yet important work to advance our understanding of computer-supported collaborative…

There has been extensive research using centrality measures in educational settings. One of the most common lines of such research has tested network centrality measures as indicators of success. The increasing interest in centrality measures has been kindled by the proliferation of learning analytics. Previous works have been dominated by…

Scholars have applied automatic content analysis to study computer-mediated communication in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Since CSCL also takes place in face-to-face interactions, we studied the automatic coding accuracy of manually transcribed face-to-face communication. We conducted our study in an authentic higher-education…

The multifaceted nature of collaborative learning environments necessitates theory to investigate the cognitive, motivational, and relational dimensions of collaboration. Several existing frameworks include aspects related to each of these three. This article explores the capability of multi-dimensional frameworks for analysis of collaborative…

The purpose of this study was to propose a mixed-methods approach to analyzing shared epistemic agency in jigsaw instruction from multiple temporal perspectives, and to evaluate its effectiveness by examining actual datasets. We employed a combination of socio-semantic network analysis (SSNA) and in-depth dialogical discourse analysis as a…

Although collaboration is considered a key 21st-century skill, oftentimes it is only assessed through the outcome measures of individual learners. In this paper, we draw upon collaborative cognitive load theory (CCLT) to explain the process of collaboration in learning from the point of view of the collective, rather than an individual learner.…

Analyses of learning based on student discourse need to account not only for the content of the utterances but also for the ways in which students make connections across turns of talk. This requires segmentation of discourse data to define when connections are likely to be meaningful. In this paper, we present an approach to segmenting data for…

The field of learning analytics (LA) has seen a gradual shift from purely data-driven approaches to more holistic views of improving student learning outcomes through data-informed learning design (LD). Despite the growing potential of LA in higher education (HE), the benefits are not yet convincing to the practitioner, in particular aspects of…

Learning to solve "complex problems"--problems whose solutions require the application of more than basic facts and skills--is critical to meaningful participation in the economic, social, and cultural life of the digital age. In this paper, we use a theoretical understanding of how professionals use reflection-in-action to solve complex…

Designing, validating, and deploying learning analytics tools for instructors or students is a challenge that requires techniques and methods from different disciplines, such as software engineering, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, educational design, and psychology. Whilst each has established its own design methodologies, we now…

In this paper, we present a novel system, inVideo, for video data analytics, and its use in transforming linear videos into interactive learning objects. InVideo is able to analyze video content automatically without the need for initial viewing by a human. Using a highly efficient video indexing engine we developed, the system is able to analyze…

This commentary reflects on the contributions to learning analytics and theory by a paper that describes how multiple theoretical frameworks were woven together to inform the creation of a new, automated discourse analysis tool. The commentary highlights the contributions of the original paper, provides some alternative approaches, and touches on…