{"title":"Applying the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy from Public Health Interventions to Educational Research","authors":"J. Cho, René F. Kizilcec","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460138","url":null,"abstract":"Public health research has developed a deep understanding of ways to help people live healthier lives through scalable interventions that change their behaviors. This work offers valuable insights for supporting learners in educational contexts, especially for improving self-regulation and goal-directed behaviors like completing a course of study--a persistent issue in formal and information post-secondary education. We present the widely adopted Behavior Change Technique (BCT) taxonomy as a model for systematically cataloging interventions in education and as a resource for inspiring new interventions in education based on public health evidence. Approaching the issue of learner attrition from the BCT perspective, we show how recent educational interventions fit into the BCT taxonomy and how the taxonomy can be used to develop new evidence-based intervention approaches. Borrowing insights from decades of public health research can advance parallel efforts in education to help learners at scale to stay on track and reach their academic goals.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130682316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dapeng Shan, Prasanta Bhattacharya, B. Kao, T. Phan
{"title":"Characterizing Amateur Tutoring Behavior on a Large Online Learning Platform","authors":"Dapeng Shan, Prasanta Bhattacharya, B. Kao, T. Phan","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460148","url":null,"abstract":"Online tutoring is an increasingly popular learning and business model, which matches students with amateur tutors recruited through a platform. While such platforms offer a unique opportunity to study how online and on-demand learning happens at scale, little is still known about how tutors engage on the platform. We present an exploratory analysis of tutor engagement on a large online tutoring platform, using an anonymized dataset of virtual sessions between tutors and students. Specifically, we show significant association between tutor engagement and associated factors like the subject and difficulty level of questions, and the experience of tutors on the platform. Moreover, we highlight important heterogeneities in tutor behavior, particularly in their work intensity. Our findings hold important implications for tutor retention and learning effectiveness on such platforms.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132302126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexander Shashkov, Robert S. Gold, Erik Hemberg, ByeongJo Kong, Ana Bell, Una-May O’Reilly
{"title":"Analyzing Student Reflection Sentiments and Problem-Solving Procedures in MOOCs","authors":"Alexander Shashkov, Robert S. Gold, Erik Hemberg, ByeongJo Kong, Ana Bell, Una-May O’Reilly","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460150","url":null,"abstract":"Student reflection is thought to be an important part of retaining and understanding knowledge gained in a course. Using natural language processing, we analyze and interpret student reflections from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to understand the students' sentiments and problem-solving procedures. The reflections are free text responses to questions from MIT 6.00.1x, an introductory programming MOOC. We compare different sentiment analysis methods, and conclude that the best-performing methods can robustly classify sentiment of student responses. In addition, we develop methods to analyze student problem-solving procedures using sentence parsing and topic modeling. We find our method can distinguish some common problem-solving procedures such as utilizing course resources.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131416471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ethan Prihar, Thanaporn Patikorn, Anthony F. Botelho, Adam C. Sales, N. Heffernan
{"title":"Toward Personalizing Students' Education with Crowdsourced Tutoring","authors":"Ethan Prihar, Thanaporn Patikorn, Anthony F. Botelho, Adam C. Sales, N. Heffernan","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460130","url":null,"abstract":"As more educators integrate their curricula with online learning, it is easier to crowdsource content from them. Crowdsourced tutoring has been proven to reliably increase students' next problem correctness. In this work, we confirmed the findings of a previous study in this area, with stronger confidence margins than previously, and revealed that only a portion of crowdsourced content creators had a reliable benefit to students. Furthermore, this work provides a method to rank content creators relative to each other, which was used to determine which content creators were most effective overall, and which content creators were most effective for specific groups of students. When exploring data from TeacherASSIST, a feature within the ASSISTments learning platform that crowdsources tutoring from teachers, we found that while overall this program provides a benefit to students, some teachers created more effective content than others. Despite this finding, we did not find evidence that the effectiveness of content reliably varied by student knowledge-level, suggesting that the content is unlikely suitable for personalizing instruction based on student knowledge alone. These findings are promising for the future of crowdsourced tutoring as they help provide a foundation for assessing the quality of crowdsourced content and investigating content for opportunities to personalize students' education.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132342261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Cho, Ian Wilkie Tomasik, Huiyun Yang, René F. Kizilcec
{"title":"Student Perceptions of Social Support in the Transition to Emergency Remote Instruction","authors":"J. Cho, Ian Wilkie Tomasik, Huiyun Yang, René F. Kizilcec","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460158","url":null,"abstract":"University courses around the world suddenly transitioned to emergency remote instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We study changes in students' experience of support from their instructors and peers in large lecture courses. Social support can act as an important resource for students and buffer against mental distress. We find that students experienced more support from instructors but less support from their peers after the transition to remote instruction. Remote learning was less active and involved fewer peer interactions, with synchronous classes resembling online office hours and students struggling to get help. Our findings suggest the need for additional resources to help students stay connected and facilitate collaboration online.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116876942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thomas Hillman, Alena Seredko, Markus Nivala, Tanya Osborne
{"title":"Knowledge Sharing in Tension: Interacting and Documenting on Stack Overflow","authors":"Thomas Hillman, Alena Seredko, Markus Nivala, Tanya Osborne","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460981","url":null,"abstract":"This exploratory paper examines a tension between interacting and documenting as knowledge sharing tasks on Stack Overflow, a platform that supports informal learning at scale in the domain of programming. The study works with platform data in the form of the text of posts and accompanying metadata along with 16 interviews with users. Drawing on trace ethnography as an approach to maintaining an interpretive stance while combining several types of data, this preliminary analysis discusses two interrelated particularities of the tension. The discussion of these particularities, platform mechanics and competing temporalities, helps to unpack a tension that is both a phenomenon of analytic interest and a member's concern for users of the platform.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132718541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reza Hadi Mogavi, Yankun Zhao, E. Haq, Pan Hui, Xiaojuan Ma
{"title":"Student Barriers to Active Learning in Synchronous Online Classes: Characterization, Reflections, and Suggestions","authors":"Reza Hadi Mogavi, Yankun Zhao, E. Haq, Pan Hui, Xiaojuan Ma","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460126","url":null,"abstract":"As more and more face-to-face classes move to online environments, it becomes increasingly important to explore any emerging barriers to students' learning. This work focuses on characterizing student barriers to active learning in synchronous online environments. The aim is to help novice educators develop a better understanding of those barriers and prepare more student-centered course plans for their active online classes. Towards this end, we adopt a qualitative research approach and study information from different sources: social media content, interviews, and surveys from students and expert educators. Through a thematic analysis, we craft a nuanced list of students' online active learning barriers within the themes of human-side, technological, and environmental barriers. Each barrier is explored from the three aspects of frequency, importance, and exclusiveness to active online classes. Finally, we conduct a summative study with 12 novice educators and explain the benefits of using our barrier list for course planning in active online classes.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134194411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should College Dropout Prediction Models Include Protected Attributes?","authors":"Renzhe Yu, Hansol Lee, René F. Kizilcec","doi":"10.1145/3430895.3460139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3430895.3460139","url":null,"abstract":"Early identification of college dropouts can provide tremendous value for improving student success and institutional effectiveness, and predictive analytics are increasingly used for this purpose. However, ethical concerns have emerged about whether including protected attributes in these prediction models discriminates against underrepresented student groups and exacerbates existing inequities. We examine this issue in the context of a large U.S. research university with both residential and fully online degree-seeking students. Based on comprehensive institutional records for the entire student population across multiple years (N = 93,457), we build machine learning models to predict student dropout after one academic year of study and compare the overall performance and fairness of model predictions with or without four protected attributes (gender, URM, first-generation student, and high financial need). We find that including protected attributes does not impact the overall prediction performance and it only marginally improves the algorithmic fairness of predictions. These findings suggest that including protected attributes is preferable. We offer guidance on how to evaluate the impact of including protected attributes in a local context, where institutional stakeholders seek to leverage predictive analytics to support student success.","PeriodicalId":125581,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale","volume":"158 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126593179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}