In recent years, the integration of big data and learning analytics has emerged as a significant trend across educational systems worldwide. The implementation of such technologies within universities -- particularly in China -- holds considerable potential for transforming teaching and learning practices. By enabling personalised, data-driven…

Language learner engagement, which is receiving increased attention, has predominantly focused on offline classroom contexts, while learner engagement in language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs) remains under-explored. This study was conducted on a College English MOOC with the purpose of examining learner engagement and its relations with…

This study addresses the problems in traditional English literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors, proposing a new teaching approach based on smart education concepts to enhance learning effectiveness. An evaluation of a semester-long reform in teaching methods is conducted using a quantitative methodology. The findings reveal…

College transfer students are those who follow a different trajectory in their higher education journeys than traditional students, completing a sub-degree before pursuing a bachelor's degree at a university. While the possibility of transferring makes higher education accessible to these students, previous studies have found that they face…

This paper studies the use of Reinforcement Learning (RL) policies for optimizing the sequencing of online learning materials to students. Our approach provides an end to end pipeline for automatically deriving and evaluating robust representations of students' interactions and policies for content sequencing in online educational settings. We…

This study investigated how English learners complete multimodal formative quizzes. Participants included 17,950 students enrolled in a mandatory English for Academic Purposes course at a university in Hong Kong. We retrieved data from Blackboard, a learning management system, and conducted a two-step cluster analysis to examine student…

Data collection and analysis is nothing new in computer-assisted language learning, but with the phenomenon of massive sets of human language collected into corpora, and especially integrated into systems driven by artificial intelligence, new opportunities have arisen for language teaching and learning. We are now seeing powerful artificial…

We study the automatic identification of educational items worthy of content authors' attention. Based on the results of such analysis, content authors can revise and improve the content of learning environments. We provide an overview of item properties relevant to this task, including difficulty and complexity measures, item discrimination, and…

Understanding the factors that influence students' results in hybrid learning environments is becoming increasingly important in today's educational environment. The goal of this research is to examine factors that influence students' academic performance as well as their level of participation in blended learning environments. A comprehensive…

The needs for precisely estimating a student's academic performance have been emphasized with an increasing amount of attention paid to Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). However, since labels for academic performance, such as test scores, are collected from outside of ITS, obtaining the labels is costly, leading to label-scarcity problem which…

Blended learning pedagogical practices supported by learning management systems have become an important part of higher education curricula. In most cases, these blended curricula are evaluated through multimodal formative assessments. Although assessments can strongly affect student outcomes, research on the topic is limited. In this paper, we…

The need for powerful professional learning to enable Multilingual Learners reach their full potential is more profound than ever. MLL shadowing is a way to create urgency around the instructional and academic needs of Multilingual Learners. The MLL Shadowing protocol is used to collect data on MLL's opportunities for speaking and listening--the…