Widget, widget as you lead, I am performing well indeed!: using results from an exploratory offline study to inform an empirical online study about a learning analytics widget in a collaborative learning environment

Abstract

The collaborative learning processes of students in online learning environments can be supported by providing learning analytics-based visualisations that foster awareness and reflection about an individual's as well as the team's behaviour and their learning and collaboration processes. For this empirical study we implemented an activity widget into the online learning environment of a live five-months Master course and investigated the predictive power of the widget indicators towards the students' grades and compared the results to those from an exploratory study with data collected in previous runs of the same course where the widget had not been in use. Together with information gathered from a quantitative as well as a qualitative evaluation of the activity widget during the course, the findings of this current study show that there are indeed predictive relations between the widget indicators and the grades, especially those regarding responsiveness, and indicate that some of the observed differences in the last run could be attributed to the implemented activity widget.