Learning Analytics: A case study of Adaptive Video Activities

Abstract

Adaptive elements are integrated in activities to facilitate personalization of the learning process and provide learning analytics for each student. Following the digital storytelling trends, integrating adaptive activities in interactive videos facilitates student engagement in crucial topics and personalizes the learning path to each individual student’s pace and learning ability. However, it is considered challenging for teachers to design an effective cluster of adaptive activities and to make sense of the learning analytics that are provided. A literature review was conducted to examine how teachers make use of user analytics in real circumstances. It showed that despite the variety of existing tools that can facilitate teachers in collecting learning analytics, the raw data require further analysis for the teacher to be able to understand the students’ individual paths and more training is required so that teachers can effectively interpret these data. This paper is based on a case study conducted to examine how learning analytics are used and what tools can support teachers in making sense of their students’ data. Moreover, it reveals how students perceive adaptive activities, in relevance to their flow and usability, as part of the overall goal of the activity, which focused on environmental awareness. To understand the processes involved around the implementation of adaptive activities, an interactive video with adaptive activities was designed and implemented in a classroom of 12 students (M=12.5 years old). The methodology followed a quantitative approach. A structured questionnaire was used to understand students’ perspectives regarding the flow and usability of the adaptive activities. Considering students’ perspectives on the flow of the adaptive-interactive video activity, students’ level of absorption and the natural progress of the activities received scores of 3.8/5 and 4/5, respectively. The usability of the activity received an average of 75.4 as a System Usability Score (SUS), which is considered above average. The results reveal that both flow and usability are essential for the effective implementation of adaptive activities. This research study recommends further studies of the topic to understand how learning analytics can become manageable and/or better integrated in software enabling the creation of adaptive activities.