Various types of structured data collected by learning management systems such as Moodle have been used to improve student learning outcomes. Learning analytics refers to an assortment of data analysis methods used for this task. These methods typically do not consider unstructured data such as blogs, discussions, e-mail, and course messages.…

Dartmouth and MIT have developed educational behavior apps and wearable devices that collect contiguous streams of data from student users. Given the consent of the user, the app collects information about a student's physical activity, sleep patterns, and location to form conjectures about social and academic behavior. These apps have the…

Data-informed instructional methods offer tremendous promise for increasing the effectiveness of teaching, learning, and schooling. Yet-to-be-developed data science approaches have the potential to dramatically advance instruction for every student and to enhance learning for people of all ages. Next steps that emerged from a recent National…

Learning technologies are now commonplace in education, and generate large volumes of educational data. Scholars have argued that analytics can and should be employed to optimize learning and learning environments. This article explores what is really meant by "analytics", describes the current best-known examples of institutional…

Human competence is a vital element for any organization that expects to survive and then thrive. Developing individual performance ability is necessary but not sufficient because trained people alone will not make an organization successful. We must determine what people should deliver and why it should be delivered in order to add measurable…

While engaged in academic reading, a university provost converged on an idea to use a preferential approach to students' selection of college courses, similar to the recommendation systems used by "Netflix" and "Amazon." The result of this idea came to be known as "Degree Compass" and was implemented on the campus of…

The Quantified Self (QS) movement is a growing global effort to use new mobile and wearable technologies to automatically obtain personal data about everyday activities. The social and material infrastructure associated with the Quantified Self (QS) movement provides a number of ideas that educational technologists should consider incorporating…

Twelve high schools in North Carolina piloted a 1:1 learning initiative, where every student and teacher received a laptop computer with wireless Internet access provided throughout the school. The overall goals of the initiative were to improve teaching practices; increase student achievement; and better prepare students for work, citizenship,…

Discusses formative evaluation for multimedia instruction and presents guidelines for formatively evaluating multimedia instruction concurrent with analysis, design, and development. Data collection criteria that include group involvement, data collection strategies, and information to be gathered are presented, and rapid prototypes and…

Discusses the use of applied cognitive task analysis (ACTA) to interview novices and gain insight into their cognitive skills and processes. Focuses particularly on novice Internet searchers at the University of Staffordshire (United Kingdom) and reviews attempts to modify ACTA, which is intended to gather information from experts as part of…

Discusses level 3 evaluation from Donald Kirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation Model (level: 1-reaction; 2-learning; 3-behavior; 4-results) to measure training program performance. Highlights include an evaluation planning matrix; increasing evaluation data accuracy and reliability; data collection method selection; designing data collection…

Suggests conventional evaluation reports are inappropriate for what needs to be portrayed for software users concerned with acquisition, software adaptation, design and development, and teacher implementation decisions. Two forms for evaluating information are described and illustrated--a narrative portrayal form and a design and development…

Describes tracking tools used by designers and users to evaluate the efficacy of hypermedia systems. Highlights include human-computer interaction research; tracking tools and user-centered design; and three examples from the Interactive Multimedia Group at Cornell University that illustrate uses of various tracking tools. (27 references) (LRW)

Explains human interactive analysis as an architecture for using computer interactive technologies in the analysis of complex work environments. A project at the Naval Training Systems Center that used video-audio data to develop a multimedia database is described; the analysis and management of data are discussed; and decision processes are…