Dimensional Morphing Interface for Dynamic Learning Evaluation

In this paper an innovative dynamic dimensional morphing metaphor is introduced to monitor students' engagement and cohort dynamic. Teachers using eLearning monitoring tools find them usually lacking usability and inadequate to give productive feedback about their learning designs. Learning analytics tools mostly focus on after course analysis with the assumption that user competence in data analysis is high. The tool we propose is based on visual interface morphing: reshaping of the interface elements, such as learning objects' links and icons, is put in place to reflect some key performance indicators of learners' activities. Quantitative and temporal analytics data, aggregated using various functions, is used to present animated enhanced information to teachers. Experiments for the assessment of the effectiveness of the proposed tool has been conducted on data from higher education courses. Through logs' analysis and teachers' questionnaires the usability and validity of the proposed metaphor has been assessed. The proposed tool outperforms traditional monitoring techniques.