Exploring the Effect of Online Course Design on Students’ Knowledge Transfer and Retention through Learning Analytics

Abstract

There is a vast amount of data collected on e-learning platforms that can provide insight and guidance to both learners and educators. However, this data is rarely used for evaluation and understanding the learning process. Hence, to fill this gap in the literature this study explored the effect of online course design on students’ transfer and retention of knowledge through learning analytics. The aim was to reveal study behaviours of participants over a short time while exploring their academic performance. Using a mixed method approach, this research is conducted in two different countries in a limited time. The results showed that the more times students visited the learning module and the longer these visits, the higher the students’ transfer knowledge scores in this module. Most importantly, the only variable found to be a significant predictor of students’ transfer learning outcome was the number of sessions in the module website.