Sweden is currently going through changes in curricula, syllabuses and subject plans for elementary school and upper secondary school in order to adapt to the growing need of digital competence in the society. Inicio is an organisation that strives to help schools adjust to these changes in strategy. Inicio arranges events where students can work with educational user devices, designed to educate the user in specific areas. Inicio wants to understand how their users learn, while using the educational user devices. This report answers that question through the use of a learning framework that describes how usage data can be collected and analyzed. In addition, the framework allows analysis of both the devices and the events themselves. This gives Inicio the ability to measure the quality of what they provide and make improvements where necessary. The framework is built to be general enough to be applicable for future areas that Inicio may want to expand into. The finished framework is the result of an iterative process where applicability, scalability and ease of use have been the main focus. This report provides results in the form of the framework, two dream scenarios, an implementation example for a current device, documentation and a visual aid to simplify the use of the framework. The dream scenarios are made up use cases designed to test the framework for future products in both hardware and software environments. / Sverige går för närvarande genom förändringar i läroplaner, kursplaner och ämnesplaner för grundskolan och gymnasieskolan för att anpassa sig till det växande behovet av digital kompetens i samhället. Inicio är en organisation som strävar efter att hjälpa skolorna att anpassa sig till dessa förändringar i strategin. Inicio arrangerar events där eleverna kan arbeta med pedagogiska användaranordningar, utformade för att utbilda användaren på specifika områden. Inicio vill förstå hur användarna lär sig, medan de använder de pedagogiska användaranordningarna. Denna rapport svarar på den frågan genom att använda ett inlärningsramverk som beskriver hur användningsdata kan samlas in och analyseras. Dessutom möjliggör ramverket analys av både enheterna och eventen i sig. Detta ger Inicio möjligheten att mäta kvaliteten på vad de tillhandahåller och utföra förbättringar vid behov. Ramverket är byggt för att vara generellt nog för att kunna tillämpas på framtida områden som Inicio kan vilja expandera till. Det färdiga ramverket är resultatet av en iterativ process där användbarhet, skalbarhet och användarvänlighet har varit huvudfokus. Rapporten erbjuder resultat i form av ramverket, två drömscenarier, ett praktiskt exempel för en aktuell anordning, dokumentation och ett visuellt hjälpmedel för att förenkla användningen av ramverket. Drömscenarierna består av användarfall som är utformade för att testa ramverket för framtida produkter i både hårdvaruoch mjukvarumiljöer.

This is a multiple-article format dissertation that explores methods for measuring student engagement in technology-mediated learning experiences. Student engagement is the committed, focused, and energetic involvement of students in learning. Student engagement is correlated with academic performance, student satisfaction, and persistence in learning, making it a valuable predictor of important learning outcomes. In order to identify which students need help or to evaluate how well an instructional interaction promotes student engagement, we need effective measures of student engagement. These measures should be scalable, cost effective, and minimally disruptive to learning. This dissertation examines different approaches to measure student engagement in technology-mediated learning environments that meet the identified measurement criteria. The first article is an extended literature review that examines how engagement has been measured in technology-mediated learning experiences. The second article is an instrument evaluation of an activity-level self-report measure of student engagement. The third article explores the relationships between learning management system user-activity data (log data) and results of the activity-level self-report measure of student engagement.

Submitted by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-10-18T13:19:42Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Euler V. Silva.pdf: 7157206 bytes, checksum: 4be0bca843596ef4c83ff1a1bcd9903f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-10-18T13:20:01Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Euler V. Silva.pdf: 7157206 bytes, checksum: 4be0bca843596ef4c83ff1a1bcd9903f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-18T13:20:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Euler V. Silva.pdf: 7157206 bytes, checksum: 4be0bca843596ef4c83ff1a1bcd9903f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-24 / FAPEAM - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas / In public high schools, it is increasingly difficult for the teacher to identify individual or collective difficulties in specific content of the Mathematics discipline. According to the report presented by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP), a body linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC), the level of learning of Brazilian students in Secondary Education has worsened in Mathematics and reached in 2015 Worse result since 2005, beginning of the historical series of the System of Evaluation of Basic Education (SAEB). Based on this information, the present work proposes and describes the contributions of the use of a mechanism to visualize student performance in assessments carried out in Moodle by the teacher. As proof of concept, the proposed mechanism was based on a prototype to dynamically present the result of the evaluations in graphs. The applied methodology was delineated by Case Study, and submitted to the validation of Mathematics teachers of the 1st Year of High School of a Federal Institute of Education (IFE) of the State of Amazonas. According to the teachers' opinion register, the results indicate that the approach is valid, since it allows the application of pedagogical interventions based on the information provided by the mechanism. / Nas escolas públicas de Ensino Médio é cada vez mais difícil para o professor identificar as dificuldades individuais ou coletivas em conteúdos específicos da disciplina de Matemática. De acordo com o relatório apresentado pelo Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (INEP), órgão vinculado ao Ministério da Educação (MEC), o nível de aprendizado dos estudantes brasileiros no Ensino Médio piorou em Matemática e chegou em 2015 ao pior resultado desde 2005, início da série histórica do Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica (SAEB). Com base nessas informações, o presente trabalho propõe e descreve quais são as contribuições do uso de um mecanismo para visualização do desempenho de estudantes em avaliações realizadas no Moodle pelo professor. Como prova de conceito, o mecanismo proposto foi baseado num protótipo para apresentar dinamicamente o resultado das avaliações em gráficos. A metodologia aplicada foi delineada por Estudo de Caso e submetido à validação de professores de Matemática do 1º Ano do Ensino Médio de um Instituto Federal de Educação (IFE) do Estado do Amazonas. De acordo com o registro da opinião dos professores, os resultados apontam que a abordagem é válida, pois permite aplicação de intervenções pedagógicas com base nas informações fornecidas pelo mecanismo.

Memoria para optar al título de Ingeniero Civil Industrial / La investigación en el campo de la educación está avanzando hacía el uso de la data educacional disponible, de distintas fuentes como lo son los sistemas de gestión del aprendizaje, con diversas herramientas que comprenden la analítica del aprendizaje (LA, por sus siglas en inglés). Con el objetivo de incorporar esta data para darle un uso con modelos de recomendación, para sugerir al alumno que acciones tomar considerando su metodología y uso de la plataforma de gestión de aprendizaje. Se emplean diversas herramientas, particularmente regresiones para estimar las acciones de mayor impacto en su desempeño.

Many students do not finish their introductory programming courses in higher education and it is difficult to identify why. While this thesis doesn’t concern itself with investigating drop outs, this fact motivated the authors to research if there was a correlation between problematic student work patterns and the students' success in the course.The aim of this thesis is to identify problematic student work patterns. To do this, we conducted a case study on the introductory programming course 1DV025 at Linnaeus University, focusing on quantitative data. This data was collected by developing an application which fetches student data from the GitLab repository of the course. After conducting statistical testing on the data, the results were analyzed in order to determine distinguishing traits that can be an indication of problematic student work patterns.The analysis uncovered that these do exist for some students that fail their examination assignments. Hopefully, the conclusions of this report can help teachers to recognize problematic student work patterns and apply preemptive actions accordingly.

Computer programming is a difficult subject to master. Introductory programming courses often have low retention and high failure rates. Part of the problem is identifying if students understand the lecture material. In a traditional classroom, a professor can gauge a class's understanding on questions asked during lecture. However, many struggling students are unlikely to speak up in class. To address this problem, recent research has focused on gathering compiler data from programming exercises to identify at-risk students in these courses. These data allow professors to intervene with individual students who are at risk and, after analyzing the data for a given time period, a professor can also re-evaluate how certain topics are taught to improve understanding. However, current implementations do not provide information in real time. They may improve a professor's teaching long term, but they do not provide insight into how an individual student is understanding a specific topic during the lecture in time for the professor to make adjustments.This research explores a system that combines compiler data analytics with in-class exercises. The system incorporates the in-class exercise into a web-based text editor with data analytics. While the students are programming in their own browsers, the website analyzes their compiler errors and console output to determine where the students are struggling. A real-time summary is presented to the professor during the lecture. This system allows a professor to receive immediate feedback on student understanding, which enables him/her to clarify areas of confusion immediately. As a result, this dynamic learning environment allows course material to better evolve to meet the needs of the students.Results show that students in a simulated programming course performed slightly better on quizzes when the instructor had access to real-time feedback during a programming exercise. Instructors were able to determine what students were struggling with from the real-time feedback. Overall, both the student and instructor test subjects found the experimental website useful.Case studies performed in an actual programming lecture allowed the professor to address errors that are not considered in the curriculum of the course. Many students appreciated the fact that the professor was able to immediately answer questions based on the feedback. Students primarily had issues with the bugs present in the alpha version of the software.

No description available.

In recent years there has been considerable adoption of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard among both Learning Management Systems (LMS), and learning applications. The LTI standard defines a way to securely connect learning applications and tools with platforms like LMS, enabling content from external learning tools to appear as if it were a native part of the LMS, and enabling these learning tools to send users' scores directly to the gradebook in the LMS. An example of such a learning tool is the OpenDSA eTextbook system which provides materials that cover a variety of Computer Science-related topics, incorporating hundreds of interactive visualizations and auto-graded exercises. Previous work turned OpenDSA into an LTI tool provider, allowing for OpenDSA eTextbooks to be integrated with the Canvas LMS. In this thesis, we further explore the problem of connecting educational systems while documenting challenges, issues, and design rationales. We expand upon the existing OpenDSA LTI infrastructure by turning OpenDSA into an LTI tool consumer, thus enabling OpenDSA to better integrate content from other LTI tool providers. We also describe how we expanded OpenDSA's LTI tool provider functionality to increase the level of granularity at which OpenDSA content can be served, and how we implemented support for several LMS, including challenges faced and remaining issues. Finally, we discuss the problem of sharing analytics data among educational systems, and outline an architecture that could be used for this purpose. / Master of Science / In recent years there has been considerable adoption of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard among Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard and Canvas, and among learning tools. The LTI standard allows for learning tools to be securely connected with platforms like LMS, enabling content from external learning tools to appear as if it were built into the LMS, and enabling these learning tools to send users’ scores directly to the gradebook in the LMS. An example of such a learning tool is the OpenDSA online textbook system which provides materials that cover a variety of Computer Science-related topics, incorporating hundreds of interactive visualizations and auto-graded exercises. Previous work enabled OpenDSA textbooks to be connected with the Canvas LMS using LTI. In this thesis, we further explore the problem of connecting educational systems while documenting challenges, issues, and design rationales. We expand the existing OpenDSA system to allow OpenDSA to better integrate content from other learning tools. We also describe how we expanded OpenDSA’s features to increase number of ways that OpenDSA content can be consumed, and how we implemented support for adding OpenDSA content to several LMS, including challenges faced and remaining issues. Finally, we discuss the problem of sharing analytics data among educational systems, and outline a potential way to connect educational systems for this purpose.

A la différence de l'apprentissage par mémorisation (rote learning), l'apprentissage significatif (meaningful learning) vise à associer de nouvelles connaissances à des connaissances déjà acquises. La construction de cartes mentales exige et supporte la mise en place de stratégies d'apprentissage significatif, et permet de rendre visible la structure de connaissances de l'apprenant. Cependant, les enseignants qui intègrent la construction de cartes mentales dans leurs activités pédagogiques doivent se contenter du rendu final des cartes mentales, et risquent de faire de mauvaises interprétations et évaluations de celles-ci par manque d'information sur leur processus de construction. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l'observation a posteriori de l'engagement de l'apprenant dans ses dimensions comportementale et cognitive, afin de proposer des indicateurs orientés processus qui permettent de comprendre ses actions et ses choix de construction de carte mentale. Nous avons suivi la méthodologie de recherche orientée par la conception (Design Based Research), qui nous a permis de proposer 3 niveaux de contributions : 1) un modèle théorique d'engagement (comportemental et cognitive) pour les activités de construction de cartes mentales, 2) un ensemble d'indicateurs d'engagement de l'apprenant à partir de traces capturées automatiquement lors de la construction de cartes mentales, et 3) un tableau de bord appelé MindMap Monitor présentant différents indicateurs à l'enseignant pour le suivi de la classe et des apprenants. Le modèle a été obtenu à partir d'une étude de littérature sur les théories de l'engagement de l'apprenant issues notamment de la recherche en psychologie de l'éducation. Les indicateurs ont été définis en croisant le modèle avec les résultats de plusieurs études de terrain avec les enseignants. Le tableau de bord implémentant les indicateurs a été construit en trois itérations. Son interface présente des vues synthétiques permettant de comparer les élèves de la classe et d'identifier ceux en difficulté lors de la construction de leur carte, et des vues détaillées décrivant l'activité de construction d'une carte pour chaque élève. Notre tableau de bord a été évalué au cours d'une expérimentation avec 12 enseignants en comparant son utilisation avec celle des cartes mentales finales associées aux vidéos de leur processus de construction. Les résultats montrent que nos indicateurs sur MindMap Monitor permettent de mieux identifier les élèves en difficulté, les difficultés partagées, ainsi que les difficultés pour un élève. Les résultats concernant la compréhension du processus de construction de la carte mentale sont plus nuancés. Nous avons également pu identifier plusieurs pistes d'amélioration sur le contenu du tableau de bord et sa présentation. Les perspectives de notre travail concernent principalement le suivi de l'engagement des apprenants en temps réel pour l'intervention et l'adaptation de la stratégie pédagogique / In contrast to rote learning, meaningful learning aims to associate new knowledge with knowledge already acquired. Mind mapping activities require and support the implementation of meaningful learning strategies and enlighten the knowledge structure of the learner. However, teachers who integrate mind mapping into their educational activities have to deal with the final rendering of maps, and risk to misinterpret and wrongly evaluate them due to the lack of information about their construction process. In this thesis, we are interested in a posteriori observation of the engagement of learners along its behavioral and cognitive dimensions, in order to propose processoriented indicators that help to understand actions and construction choices of mind maps. We followed the Design Based Research methodology, that allowed us to propose three levels of contributions : 1) a theoretical model of engagement (behavioral and cognitive) for mind mapping activities, 2) a set of indicators of learner engagement constructed from automatically captured map building traces, and 3) a dashboard called MindMap Monitor presenting various indicators to teachers for class and learners monitoring. The model was obtained from a literature review on theories of engagement, including research in educational psychology. The indicators have been defined by comparing the model with the results of several field studies with teachers. The dashboard implementing the indicators was developed following three iterations. Its interface presents synthetic views allowing the comparison of students in the class, the identification of those in difficulty, and detailed views describing the mind mapping activity for each student. Our dashboard was evaluated with an experiment involving 12 teachers. We compared its use with that of final mind maps associated with videos of their construction process. Results show that our indicators on MindMap Monitor are useful to better identify students in difficulty, shared difficulties, as well as difficulties for individual students. Results concerning the understanding of the mind maps construction process are more balanced. We were also able to identify several ways to improve both the content and the visualizations of the dashboard. The perspectives of our work are mainly related to monitoring learners’ engagement in real time for the intervention and adaptation of the teachers’ educational strategies

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2017-03-15T16:53:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Francini Scipioni Belau_.pdf: 2278562 bytes, checksum: 806e6ee479b7b02ba595eb0759a37f05 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-15T16:53:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Francini Scipioni Belau_.pdf: 2278562 bytes, checksum: 806e6ee479b7b02ba595eb0759a37f05 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-11 / Gvdasa - Inteligência Educacional / A temática deste trabalho estabelece um diálogo entre as áreas da educação a distância, linguística e processamento automático das línguas naturais (PLN). A proposta é responder às seguintes questões norteadoras: (i) como a negação da emoção se manifesta na superfície da língua? E (ii) que regras computacionais expressam a negação da emoção?. A metodologia do trabalho segue o proposto por Dias-da-Silva (2006), que organiza os trabalhos em PLN em três domínios de investigação complementares: (i) linguístico, (ii) linguístico-computacional e (iii) computacional. No primeiro domínio, o linguístico, descreve-se o fenômeno da negação e o seu uso. No domínio linguístico-computacional, vamos representar os padrões percebidos para orientar os especialistas a codificarem essas regras em uma linguagem computacional. Para propor a descrição linguístico-computacional dos modos de expressão da negação, a partir de um corpus construído em contexto de ensino a distância com base nos relatos diários e fóruns dos alunos, utilizamos como base a teoria abordada por Maria Helena de Moura Neves (2011). A etapa computacional, que prevê a implementação do sistema, é própria do informata e não será contemplada neste trabalho, será realizada por grupo de pesquisa parceiro em colaboração com a empresa GVDasa. Ao todo foram criadas 11 regras linguístico-computacionais que possibilita dar conta das propriedades linguísticas identificadas ao responder a questão (i) de pesquisa. As regras visam a contribuir para que um sistema computacional possa localizar os fenômenos da negação em textos e verificar a existência de inversões de polaridade e emoção. / The thematic of this work establishes a dialogue between the fields of distance learning, linguistics, and natural language processing (NLP). The proposal is to answer the following guiding questions: (i) how does the negation of emotion manifest itself on the surface of the language? and (ii) which computational rules express the negation of emotion? The methodology of this work follows the proposed by Dias-da-Silva (2006), who organizes the works in NLP in three complementary domains of investigation: (i) linguistics, (ii) computational-linguistics, and (iii) computational. In the first domain, the linguistic domain, the phenomenon of denial and its use is described. In the linguistic-computational domain, we will represent the perceived patterns in order to guide the experts to encode these rules in computational language. In order to propose the linguistic-computational description of the forms of expression of negation, through a corpus built in a distance learning context based on daily reports and students’ forums, we take as a base the theory approached by Maria Helena de Moura Neves (2011). The computational phase which forecasts the implementation of the system is pertinent to the computing technician and it will not be contemplated in this work, but it will be performed by a partner research group in collaboration with the GVDasa company. Altogether, 11 linguistic-computational rules were created that make it possible to account for the linguistic properties identified when answering the research question (i). The rules aim to contribute with a computational system to locate the phenomenon of negation in texts and verify the existence of inversions of polarity and emotion.