A relevant learning space for academics, especially junior researchers, is the academic conference. While conference participation has long been associated with personal attendance at the conference venue, virtual participation is becoming increasingly important. This study investigates the perceived value of a purely virtual academic conference…

Learning analytics (LA) provides tools to analyze historical data with the goal of better understanding how curricular structures and features have impacted student learning. Forward-looking curriculum design, however, frequently involves a degree of uncertainty. Historical data may be unavailable, a contemplated modification to curriculum may be…

Technology-enhanced learning supported by virtual learning environments (VLEs) facilitates tutors and students. VLE platforms contain a wealth of information that can be used to mine insight regarding students' learning behaviour and relationships between behaviour and academic performance, as well as to model data-driven decision-making. This…

No course exists in isolation, so examining student progression through courses within a broader program context is an important step in integrating course-level and program-level analytics. Integration in this manner allows us to see the impact of course-level changes to the program, as well as identify points in the program structure where…

This paper describes investigations in visualizing logpaths of students in an online calculus course held at Florida State University in 2014. The clickstreams making up the logpaths can be used to visualize student progress in the information space of a course as a graph. We consider the graded activities as nodes of the graph, while information…

Data models built for analyzing student data often obfuscate temporal relationships for reasons of simplicity, or to aid in generalization. We present a model based on temporal relationships of heterogeneous data as the basis for building predictive models. We show how within- and between-semester temporal patterns can provide insight into the…

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…

When used effectively, reflective writing tasks can deepen learners' understanding of key concepts, help them critically appraise their developing professional identity, and build qualities for lifelong learning. As such, reflective writing is attracting substantial interest from universities concerned with experiential learning, reflective…

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…

Central to the mission of most educational institutions is the task of preparing the next generation of citizens to contribute to society. Schools, colleges, and universities value a range of outcomes--e.g., problem solving, creativity, collaboration, citizenship, service to community--as well as academic outcomes in traditional subjects. Often…