Existing e-assessment tools may not be a panacea to address all assessment situations, as students might find the traditional pen-and-paper approach to provide their answers more convenient than typing them online. For example, constructed response or essay-based assessments will require the active participation of students and lecturers to…

This study proposes and verifies the performance of an analysis tool for visualizing online interactions. A review of the most widely used methods for analyzing online interactions, including quantitative analysis, content analysis, and social network analysis methods, indicates these analysis methods have some limitations resulting from their…

A CMI-based online forum is designed to address the need for a system to manage students' online participation. The proposed system may reduce the time required to manage online participation. The system was evaluated by a total of 64 students enrolled in an academic semester. The evaluation has two objectives. The first was to determine the…

Learning Analytics can provide powerful tools for teachers in order to support them in the iterative process of improving the effectiveness of their courses and to collaterally enhance their students' performance. In this paper, we present the theoretical background, design, implementation, and evaluation details of eLAT, a Learning Analytics…

Although the term data-driven decision making (DDDM) is relatively new (Moss, 2007), the underlying concept of DDDM is not. For example, the practices of formative assessment and computer-managed instruction have historically involved the use of student performance data to guide what happens next in the instructional sequence (Morrison, Kemp, &…

Data-driven decision making, popularized in the 1980s and 1990s, is evolving into a vastly more sophisticated concept known as big data that relies on software approaches generally referred to as analytics. Big data and analytics for instructional applications are in their infancy and will take a few years to mature, although their presence is…

Course management systems (CMSs) are software systems designed to manage course content and course activities. These tools integrate technological and pedagogical features into a web-based system that allows instructors, even those who are unfamiliar with web-based technologies, to design, deliver, and manage an online course. However, CMSs have…

Although previous research has demonstrated learning benefits for both instructors and students in the web-based collaborative learning environments, one of them major difficulties is the lack of a practical approach to assist teachers in evaluating the knowledge contribution of learners. A novel method of merging multi-modes of assessment and…

In the last two decades, there has been a proliferation of Web-based course-management systems designed to facilitate postsecondary teaching (for example, WebCT, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle). In general, these systems provide analogs for delivering lectures, holding class discussions, giving quizzes and examinations (typically multiple…

The authors describe the University of Central Florida's top-down/bottom-up action analytics approach to using data to inform decision-making at the University of Central Florida. The top-down approach utilizes information about programs, modalities, and college implementation of Web initiatives. The bottom-up approach continuously monitors…

A frequent task in educational settings is to assign students to groups based on stated preferences for some projects or topics. This paper introduces a web-based tool supporting both the work flow of collecting student data and the group formation. The latter is based on finding optimal solutions to suitable mathematical assignment problems,…

The ability to visualize student engagement and experience data provides valuable opportunities for learning support and curriculum design. With the rise of the use of learning analytics to provide "actionable intelligence" on students' learning, the challenge is to create visualizations of the data, which are clear and useful to the…

Community colleges continue to experience growth in online courses. This growth reflects the need to increase the numbers of students who complete certificates or degrees. Retaining online students, not to mention assuring their success, is a challenge that must be addressed through practical institutional responses. By leveraging existing student…

Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems provide personalized educational content to learners. However most of them do not support the functionality of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the reusability of their courses is hard work. On the other hand some LMS support SCORM specifications but do not provide adaptive features. This article…

College and university administrators everywhere are struggling with the challenges of trying to "do more with less" in terms of balancing mandates and resources. The Internet has enabled new approaches for teaching and learning, vast interinstitutional collaborations in humanities and scientific research, and a renewed focus on the…