De Förenta Nationernas Agenda 2030 fastställer som ett delmål att säkerställa utbildning av hög kvalitet och främja livslångt lärande för alla som en del av arbetet för ett mer hållbart samhälle. Vikten av detta delmål blir särskilt tydlig i och med det observerbara sambandet mellan en fullständig gymnasieexamen och allmän hälsa i Sverige; gymnasiestudenter som går ut med en gymnasieexamen tenderar att erhålla bättre allmän hälsa. Learning Analytics är ett relativt nytt område inom utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning som syftar till att förbättra utbildning med hjälp av elevdata. Detta arbete undersökte vilken möjlig påverkan och begränsningar som förekommer vid implementering av en multipel linjär regressionsmodell utvecklad för en matematikkurs i en gymnasieskola. Vid utvecklingen av denna modell fastställdes tre signifikanta indikatorer för att förutsäga elevernas slutbetyg; Diagnos resultat,resultat på nationella proven och frånvaro. Prognosmodellen har utvärderats statistiskt varpå den visade sig vara tillförlitlig i 90% av bedömningarna, vilket inte är tillräckligt säkert för att användas i verkliga bedömningstillfällen eftersom lärare kräver att resultaten är obestridliga. Genom en fokusgruppsintervju med lärare granskas dessa resultat och deltagarna uttrycker sitt intresse för prognosmodeller tillsammans med en reflektion över elevers potentiella negativa reaktioner på en ogynnsam prognos. Utvärdering av modellen visar att den i dagsläget har en rimlig förmåga att förutsäga elevers slutbetyg men att det finns ett starkt behov av insamling av mer nyanserade data för att öka möjligheten till innovation i framtida arbeten / The 2030 Agenda establishes the goal to ensure quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The importance of this goal becomes particularly clear when taking into account the link between upper secondary school graduation and general health in Sweden; Upper secondary school graduates tend to have better general health. Learning Analytics is a relatively new area of education research which aims to improve education using student data. This report examines the possible impact and limitations when implementing a multiple linear regression model developed for a mathematics course in an upper secondary school. In developing this model, three major indicators are established to be significant in predicting students' final grade; Diagnosis results, national test results and the amount of student absence. The model was statistically evaluated and found to be reliable in 90% of cases, which is not secure enough to be used in real assessment situations as teachers require the results to be indisputable. Through a focus group interview with teachers these results are evaluated and the participants establish their interest in predictive tools along with concerns for students' negative reactions to poor results. Evaluation of the model shows it has a reasonable ability to anticipate students' final grades but with a strong need for improvement in data collection methods and acquisition of more nuanced data to support greater possibility for innovation in future works.

There are several hundred Learning Management Systems (LMS) avaliable today. In order to decide which LMS is a good fit for a specific company, it is important to define a list of requirements for an LMS. The purpose of this thesis was to construct a list of requirements for a small consulting firm and test a selection of LMSs. An additional purpose was to evaluate the list of requirements against previous research on the area of digital learning and learning in LMSs. The thesis' result might help other companies to evaluate LMSs in comparison to their needs.  The requirements were found by conducting eleven interviews with employees at the consulting firm and their customers, and performing a thematic analysis on the interview data. The criteria for selecting LMSs was a free trial period and suitability according to the company's business requirements. The LMSs chosen for detailed testing were Techable, Thinkific, AddWisdom and Learnifier. The result showed that AddWisdom fulfilled all high priority level requirements. However, Techable and Thinkific fulfilled the majority of the company's functionality requirements. In the analysis, deficiencies in the list of requirements were found, which are important to take into account in the future. / Det finns fleera hundra digitala lärplattformar (eng. Learning Management Systems, LMS) tillgängliga idag. För att kunna avgöra vilken digital lärplattform som passar ett specifikt företag bäst är de viktigt att definiera en kravlista för en lärplatform. Syftet med detta examensarbete var att konstruera en kravlista för ett mindre konsultföretag och testa ett urval av lärplattformar. Ett ytterligare syfte var att utvärdera kravlistan mot tidigare forskning på området digitalt lärande och lärande i digitala lätplattformar. Resultatet av uppsatsen kan hjälpa andra företag att utvärdera plattformar i jämförelse med deras behov.  Kraven identifierades genom att genomföra elva intervjuer med anställda på konsultföretaget och deras kundföretag, och genomföra en tematisk analys på intevjudatan. Kriterierna för att välja en digital lärplattform var en gratid provperiod och lämplighet enligt företagets affärskrav. De plattformar som valdes för detaljerad testning var Teachable, Thinkific, AddWisdom och Learnifier.  Resultatet visade att AddWisdom uppfyllde alla högprioriterade krav. Dock uppfyllde Teachable och Thinkific majoriteten av företagets krav på funktionalitet. I analysen upptäcktes brister i kravlistan, som är viktiga att ta hänsyn till i framtiden.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell Neilsen / The Biosecurity Research Institute (BRI) facility at Kansas State University is a huge biocontainment facility to conduct research on infectious diseases that pose a threat to plant, animal and human health. The BRI Training and Education Program is currently offline; i.e., classroom sessions are taken to provide this training and education. The objective behind taking up this project was to move the entire training and education module of Biosecurity Research Institute online, instead of having a classroom session for each training course, with an subject matter expert (SME) to come and take the training session. The aim is to develop an online training system which is synchronized with the information in the BRI Research Project Database. The employees will only have to login to the website, scroll through the list of courses they are enrolled in, take the courses, write the assignments/quizzes assigned to the course and then submit the quizzes. They can also self-enroll themselves into courses, if they are given the permission to do so. The SME’s of the courses can create new courses, upload the course materials, enroll users into the courses, and assign deadlines to course completion. Once the student submits the course quiz or assignments, the SME’s can grade the quiz, assign a final grade to the students, and give feedback on their performance. They can even reassign the course in case of poor performance by the student. The administrators of the website can assign roles to different personnel, give permissions according to need and requirement, add/delete courses, and change the appearance of the website. The project is to be done using a Learning Management System called Moodle. Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an online learning management system designed to allow interaction between teachers and students. The back-end database used is SQL Server 2008 R2 and additional tools used are Adobe Presenter (with Microsoft Power Point 2010) to create the courses in SCORM format.

<div>Over the past decade, universities had a significant improvement in using online learning tools. A standard learning management system provides fundamental functionalities to satisfy the basic needs of its users. The new generation of learning management systems have introduced a novel system that provides social networking features. An unprecedented number of users use the social aspects of such platforms to create their profile, collaborate with other users, and find their desired career path. Nowadays there are many learning systems which provide learning materials, certificates, and course management systems. This allows us to utilize such information to help the students and the instructors in their academic life. </div><div><br></div><div>The presented research work's primary goal is to focus on creating an intelligent personal assistant within the social learning systems. The proposed personal assistant has a human-like persona, learns about the users, and recommends useful and meaningful materials for them. The designed system offers a set of features for both institutions and members to achieve their goal within the learning system. It recommends jobs and friends for the users based on their profile. The proposed agent also prioritizes the messages and shows the most important message to the user. </div><div><br></div><div>The developed software supports model-controller-view architecture and provides a set of RESTful APIs which allows the institutions to integrate the proposed intelligent agent with their learning system. <br></div>

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-08-03T17:31:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Cristina Marcelino Bento.pdf: 4724253 bytes, checksum: ffd05de4cac6fb2f3875d88d9a145f5e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T17:31:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Cristina Marcelino Bento.pdf: 4724253 bytes, checksum: ffd05de4cac6fb2f3875d88d9a145f5e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-13 / This doctoral thesis explores the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in education. It is a case study in a Salesian institution of higher education located in the state of São Paulo (Brazil). The case study outlines in qualitative research (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; YIN, 2015) comprising three stages: exploration, data collection and analysis. Its objectives are to describe and analyze how a group of teachers of this institution uses institutional and non-institutional virtual environments, identify and justify the use of non-institutional virtual environments and observe the differences in the use of institutional and non-institutional environments. Moodle and Facebook are the virtual environments used by teachers in the institution. The study noted that the use of weighted form occurs in both environments, as the process of understanding and\or learning environment of each tool, the adequacy to the profile of the students, or the need to understand their own role in cyberspace. The analysis concludes that there is need for change of the pedagogical practice for teachers using AVA as an extension of the classroom, which affects the teaching profile / Esta tese de doutorado explora o uso de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem (AVA) na educação. É um estudo de caso realizado em uma instituição de ensino superior salesiana localizada no interior do Estado de São Paulo. O estudo de caso delineiase em investigação qualitativa (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; YIN, 2015) compreendendo três etapas: exploratória, coleta e análise de dados. Seus objetivos são: descrever e analisar como um grupo de professores dessa instituição utiliza ambientes virtuais institucionais e não institucionais; identificar e justificar o uso de ambientes virtuais não institucionais; e verificar se há diferença no uso de ambientes institucionais e não institucionais. Moodle e Facebook são os ambientes virtuais utilizados pelos professores na instituição. O estudo observou que o uso de forma ponderada se dá em ambos os ambientes, seja pelo processo de compreensão e\ou aprendizagem das ferramentas de cada ambiente, pela adequação ao perfil dos alunos ou pela necessidade de compreender a própria atuação no ciberespaço. A análise conclui que há necessidade da mudança da prática pedagógica para o docente que utiliza AVA como extensão da sala de aula, o que afeta o perfil docente

This thesis has conducted interpretive qualitative research to investigate the impacts and limitations of LMS Moodle in distance students’ learning process from distance students’ perspectives. The qualitative data was collected from mediated semi-structured interviews with distance students participating in a Master program at Linnaeus University. Through empirical findings and analysis, the positive experiences and limitations of using Moodle in facilitating distance learning process have been revealed from distance students’ perspectives. The positive experiences include that LMS Moodle was used by distance students for interacting with other students, teachers and accessing study contents during their distance learning process. Moodle was used to know new classmates, teachers and the new learning system, recruit group members for the collaborative works, communicate with teachers and other classmates, and obtain significant information about courses. Especially, accessing study contents in Moodle easily was critical for distance students' learning. However, there were still some limitations. Distance students preferred Facebook to Moodle for student-student interaction during the process of collaborative works. The interaction with teachers was not adequate and timely for distance students. The limitations also include unsatisfactory Moodle interface design and poor usability of Moodle.   Some suggestions about improving LMS Moodle in different ways had also been acquired from the research. The suggestions from distance students mainly focus on integrating Moodle with other web conferencing platforms for improving the quality of student-student, student-teacher interaction in Moodle, ameliorating the interface design of Moodle, and adding Moodle tutorials. The result will help the development of LMS based on distance students' needs and finally benefit distance students' learning process.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:22:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Antonio Marcos Ficiano.pdf: 5036119 bytes, checksum: cb709e617e65237763b790ae354cf962 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-10-25 / The research work - which is characterized by the intervention - aims to understand and analyze the overall process of building an interface to the Moodle Learning Management System, assuming the combination of three elements: navigability, usability and architecture information seeking to encourage learning, which demonstrates the process of building the interface to highlight the importance of multidisciplinary work. The project addresses the Distance Education and the concept, characteristics and possibilities of interactivity of AVAs, with a brief mention of multimedia, the Internet and its history. Speaks of computer languages, programming techniques, classification of languages, types of software, models of virtual environments and web-based methodologies to software development, based on the approach to systems design. This is the Moodle platform, with its technological potential, examining the process of customizing the platform with an corporate course, in which greater navigability and usability have been taken as the base. And finish the job search when he observes the product built under the light of the concepts and theories studied, and how to apply these principles could be confirmed in promoting effective learning. Research has shown that both teachers and students are benefited by participating in classes to distance learning in virtual environments, while it is well structured, in that they enable the development of critical thinking, practical reasoning, ease of interaction, collaboration and socializing / O trabalho de pesquisa realizado - que tem por característica a intervenção -, tem como objetivo geral conhecer e analisar o processo de construção de uma interface para o Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem Moodle, partindo do pressuposto da articulação de três elementos: navegabilidade, usabilidade e arquitetura da informação em busca de favorecer a aprendizagem, que demonstra o processo de construção da interface com o destaque da importância do trabalho multidisciplinar. O projeto aborda a Educação a Distância e o conceito, características e possibilidades de interatividade dos AVAs, com uma breve referência da multimídia, da Internet e sua história. Fala das linguagens de computação, técnicas de programação, classificações das linguagens, tipos de softwares, modelos de ambientes virtuais baseados na web e metodologias utilizadas para o desenvolvimento de softwares, com base na abordagem de concepção de sistemas. Trata da plataforma Moodle, com suas potencialidades tecnológicas, com a análise do processo de customização da plataforma com um curso corporativo, em que uma maior navegabilidade e usabilidade foram tidas como base. E termina o trabalho de pesquisa quando observa o produto construído sob a luz dos conceitos e teorias estudados, e de que maneira a aplicação desses princípios puderam ser confirmados na promoção efetiva da aprendizagem. A pesquisa mostrou que tanto os professores como os alunos são beneficiados ao participarem de aulas a distância em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem, quando este se encontra bem estruturado, na medida em que estes possibilitam o desenvolvimento de espírito crítico, a prática de raciocínio, facilidade de interação, colaboração e socialização

Learning management systems (LMSs) are the technical foundation for online learning programs that offer benefits to learners in a variety of settings. As with many enterprise software systems, LMSs are expensive and carry considerable risk. Exploring critical success factors (CSFs) and using them as a foundation for decisions concerning complex software implementations helps increase the likelihood of success. This study addresses the gap in knowledge concerning CSFs for LMS implementations. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover CSFs by exploring the lived experiences of 8 association executives who identified themselves through email communications as having managed a successful LMS implementation. Organizations providing online continuing education programs were identified using a publicly available list, and program managers were identified from the organization's website. Interviews using semi-structured questions yielded a set of tightly correlated CSFs from 6 of the 8 participants. General systems theory and sociotechnical systems theory underpinned the study. Moustakas' data analysis methods were used to code the interviews and develop themes, which resulted in a set of actionable CSFs. Stakeholder support, a well-planned implementation, an experienced vendor, and software that provides a predictable user interface were among emergent CSFs for LMS implementations. This research may have a positive social impact because reducing the risk of LMS implementations will enable organizational leaders to extend learning opportunities to more individuals. Those opportunities, in turn, will lead to prosperity for membership associations and the industries they serve.

Enrollment in full-time, virtual, K-12 schools is increasing while mathematics performance in these institutions is lacking compared to national averages. Scholarly literature lacks research studies using learning analytics to better predict student outcomes via student learning management system (LMS) interactions, specifically in the low performing area of middle school mathematics. The theoretical framework for this study was a combination of Hrastinski's theory of online learning as online participation and Moore's 3 types of interactions model of online student behavior. The purpose of this study was to address the current research gap in the full-time, K-12 eLearning field and determine whether 2 types of student LMS interactions could predict mathematics course performance. The research questions were developed to determine whether student clicks navigating course content page(s) or the number of times a student accessed resources predicted student performance in a full-time, virtual, mathematics course after student demographic variables were controlled for. This quantitative study used archived data from 238 seventh grade Math 7B students enrolled from January 8th-10th to May 22nd-25th in two Midwestern, virtual, K-12 schools. Hierarchical regressions were used to test the 2 research questions. Student clicks navigating the course content pages were found to predict student performance after the effects of student demographic covariates were controlled for. Similarly, the number of times a student accessed resources also predicted student performance. The findings from this study can be used to advise actionable changes in student support, build informative student activity dashboards, and predict student outcomes for a more insightful, data-driven, learning experience in the future.

Social networking sites are among the most popular daily activities of students these days. Students are mostly using social networking sites for communication and sharing of their experiences. Facebook is an example of a social networking site, which supports additional features such as creating a profile page, creating group pages and supports possibility of implementing different integrated application with Facebook. These features improve the Facebook experience, allowing users to form groups, where they can introduce ideas and concepts, which can be shared and discussed in a structured style. For this thesis we have created a new learning management system by implementing an online educational platform within a Facebook context. This work introduces a new, complementary style of education, where students can improve their knowledge and sociality outside the university in an innovative way. The platform takes advantage of gamification, which introduces game-like elements to concepts such as education and learning management systems, to make them more fun and rewarding. The goal of this thesis is to extend the educational border to an interesting online environment where students can learn, communicate, and examine their knowledge globally in different courses within our application platform in Facebook.