Stepping out of the box: towards analytics outside the learning management system

Most of the current learning analytic techniques have as starting point the data recorded by Learning Management Systems (LMS) about the interactions of the students with the platform and among themselves. But there is a tendency on students to rely less on the functionality offered by the LMS and use more applications that are freely available on the net. This situation is magnified in studies in which students need to interact with a set of tools that are easily installed on their personal computers. This paper shows an approach using Virtual Machines by which a set of events occurring outside of the LMS are recorded and sent to a central server in a scalable and unobtrusive manner.