Submitted by Fernando Souza (fernandoafsou@gmail.com) on 2017-08-15T11:20:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3152655 bytes, checksum: 5c099c7c99cf7099f300445c236f2a03 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-15T11:20:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3152655 bytes, checksum: 5c099c7c99cf7099f300445c236f2a03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in education has grown considerably in recent years, much due to the expansion of courses in distance mode. Such learning support spaces require you to think of new educational methods, particularly as regards the assessment of learning. Because of the large number of students in this type of education working in AVA, a large volume of data is generated. So to get yourself a good learning evaluation model, which offers the teacher possibilities for measuring student performance, it is necessary an analysis of such data. Moodle provides the teacher reports, charts and graphs that let you see the data for the actions of the students. Such actions represent from access to resources and materials, to participate in activities such as discussion forums and results of participation in questionnaires, for example. However, these Moodle native views do not take into account the real needs of teachers, especially in regard to effective monitoring of learning. Given the above, it is evident the need to have tools that help in this process. For this, there have to be a model permits, agile and flexible, storage and use of educational data of students to the application of techniques of Learning Analytics - measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data on students and their contexts, for understanding and learning in order to optimize the environments in which they occur - with focus on diagnosis of learning disability situations in the context of the Distance Education. To evaluate this proposal, the ConcetpVis tool was implemented from the model proposed in this paper. Then, there was a case study in the Elementary Mathematics discipline of the Bachelor's Degree in Computer Education Unit Distance UFPB and finally presented a questionnaire to a group of teachers answered from his impressions. / O uso de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem (AVA) na educação tem crescido bastante nos últimos anos, muito em virtude da expansão dos cursos na modalidade à distância. Tais espaços de suporte a aprendizagem exigem que se pense em novos métodos educativos, sobretudo no que se refere à avaliação da aprendizagem. Em virtude da grande quantidade de alunos nessa modalidade de educação atuando no AVA, um grande volume de dados é gerado. Assim, para obter-se um bom modelo de avaliação de aprendizagem, que ofereça ao professor possibilidades de medir o desempenho dos alunos, faz-se necessário uma análise desses dados. O Moodle oferece ao professor relatórios, tabelas e gráficos que permitem visualizar os dados referentes às ações dos alunos. Tais ações representam desde o acesso a recursos e materiais didáticos, até a participação em atividades, como fóruns de discussão e resultados de participação em questionários, por exemplo. Contudo, essas visualizações nativas do Moodle não levam em consideração as reais necessidades dos docentes, sobretudo em relação a um acompanhamento efetivo da aprendizagem. Diante do exposto, fica evidente a necessidade de se ter ferramentas que auxiliem neste processo. Para isso, há de ter-se um Modelo que permita, de modo ágil e flexível, o armazenamento e a utilização dos dados educacionais dos alunos para a aplicação de técnicas de Learning Analytics – medição, coleta, análise e comunicação de dados sobre os alunos e seus contextos, para fins de compreensão e aprendizagem com fim de otimizar os ambientes em que ocorrem – com foco no diagnóstico de situações de dificuldade de aprendizagem no contexto da Educação a Distância. Para avaliar esta proposta, a ferramenta ConcetpVis foi implementada a partir do modelo proposto no presente trabalho. Em seguida, realizou-se um estudo de caso na disciplina Matemática Elementar do curso de Licenciatura em Computação da Unidade de Educação a Distância da UFPB e, por fim, apresentou-se um questionário para que um grupo de professores respondesse a partir de suas impressões.

Der Einsatz digitaler Medien hat in der nationalen Hochschullehre Tradition. Lernmanagementsysteme (LMS), E-Learning, Blended Learning, etc. sind Schlagwörter im Hochschulalltag. Allerdings stellt sich die Frage, was LMS und Blended Learning im Zeitalter digitaler Vernetzung und der herangewachsenen Generation der “Digital Natives” leisten (können bzw. sollen)? Die Verbreitung neuer Technologien im Zusammenhang mit neuen Lehr- und Lernkonzepten wie OER, MOOCS, etc. macht zudem die Entwicklung von Analytics-Instrumenten erforderlich. Das ist auch im nationalen Diskurs von großem Interesse und legt neue Handlungsfelder für Hochschulen offen. Doch es stellt sich die Frage, warum Learning Analytics (LA) bzw. Academic Analytics (AA) bisher nur in einem geringfügigen Maße an deutschen Hochschulen erfolgreich zum Einsatz kommen und warum eine Nutzung insbesondere in LMS, wie zum Beispiel OPAL, nicht ohne Weiteres realisierbar erscheint. Hierzu sollen Einflussfaktoren, die die Implementierung von LA- und AA-Instrumenten hemmen, identifiziert und diskutiert werden. Aufbauend darauf werden erste Handlungsfelder vorgestellt, deren Beachtung eine verstärkte Einbettung von LA- und AA Instrumenten in LMS möglich machen soll.

Syftet med arbetet var att utforska möjligheten att hämta data automatiskt från ett ett escape room. Vilken data som är väsentlig att samla in för att stödja utvecklingen av ett escape room? Även hur ska datan samlas in från det fysiska rummet samt vilka komponenter från digitala spel kan användas i insamlings- och analysprocessen? En intervjubaserad metod användes för att granska dom tre olika behoven en projektledare, fullskaligt system och prototyputveckling kräver av ett utvärderingssystem. Resultatet blev att information som tiden för att lösa ett pussel, hur många ledtrådar och vad spelarna interagerar är information som behövs. Användningen av digitala komponenter som Unity Analytics och Xbox Adaptiv Controller har bevisats användas för mer än bara datorspel. Systemet är inte komplett utan enbart en prototyp. Prototypen visar dock på ett gott resultat och implementationen mot ett fullskaligt system är mer än möjligt vid ett framtida arbete. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p>

Ce travail s’inscrit dans une problématique générale de l’analytique de l’apprentissage numérique et particulièrement dans le contexte du projet ANR HUBBLE, un observatoire national permettant le dépôt de processus d’analyse de haut niveau. Nous nous intéressons principalement à la communication des données d’analyse aux utilisateurs en mettant à leur disposition des tableaux de bord d'apprentissage (TBA). Notre problématique porte sur l’identification de structures génériques dans le but de générer dynamiquement des TBA sur mesure. Ces structures doivent être à la fois génériques et adaptables aux besoins d’utilisateurs. Les travaux existants proposent le plus souvent des TBA trop généraux ou développés de manière adhoc. Au travers du projet HUBBLE, nous souhaitons exploiter les décisions des utilisateurs pour générer dynamiquement des TBA. Nous nous sommes intéressés au domaine de l’informatique décisionnelle en raison de la place des tableaux de bord dans leur processus. La prise de décision exige une compréhension explicite des besoins des utilisateurs. C'est pourquoi nous avons adopté une approche de conception centrée sur l'utilisateur dans le but de lui fournir des TBA adaptés. Nous proposons aussi un processus de capture des besoins qui a permis l’élaboration de nos modèles (indicateur, moyens de visualisation, utilisateur, …). Ces derniers sont utilisés par un processus de génération implémenté dans un prototype de générateur dynamique. Nous avons procédé à une phase d'évaluation itérative dont l’objectif est d'affiner nos modèles et de valider l'efficacité de notre processus de génération ainsi que de démontrer l'impact de la décision sur la génération des TBA. / This work is part of a broader issue of Learning Analytics (LA). It is particularly carried out within the context of the HUBBLE project, a national observatory for the design and sharing of data analysis processes. We are interested in communicating data analysis results to users by providing LA dashboards (LAD). Our main issue is the identification of generic LAD structures in order to generate dynamically tailored LAD. These structures must be generic to ensure their reuse, and adaptable to users’ needs. Existing works proposed LAD which remains too general or developed in an adhoc way. According to the HUBBLE project, we want to use identified decisions of end-users to generate dynamically our LAD. We were interested in the business intelligence area because of the place of dashboards in the decision-making process. Decision-making requires an explicit understanding of user needs. That's why we have adopted a user-centered design (UCD) approach to generate adapted LAD. We propose a new process for capturing end-users’ needs, in order to elaborate some models (Indicator, visualization means, user, pattern, …). These models are used by a generation process implemented in a LAD dynamic generator prototype. We conducted an iterative evaluation phase. The objective is to refine our models and validate the efficiency of our generation process. The second iteration demonstrates the impact of the decision on the LAD generation. Thus, we can confirm that the decision is considered as a central element for the generation of LADs.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-06-29T13:59:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Cleber Portal_.pdf: 1881529 bytes, checksum: aa34b82855518c0d808e9a3ab2e103e0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-29T13:59:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cleber Portal_.pdf: 1881529 bytes, checksum: aa34b82855518c0d808e9a3ab2e103e0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-29 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A presente dissertação de mestrado, desenvolvida no contexto do Grupo de Pesquisa Educação Digital GPe-dU UNISINOS/CNPq, vinculada à Linha de Pesquisa Educação, Desenvolvimento e Tecnologias do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, investigou como são elaboradas as estratégias utilizadas pelos diferentes atores envolvidos no contexto da Educação a Distância (EaD), para minimizar a evasão e potencializar a permanência dos estudantes nessa modalidade, tendo como subsídios um conjunto de informações e indicadores gerados por um sistema, o GVWise, que faz uso de mineração de dados e Learning Analytics. A pesquisa é exploratória, de natureza qualitativa. Fundamenta-se na Teoria Ator-Rede (LATOUR, 2012) e faz uso da metodologia da cartografia das controvérsias. (LATOUR, 2012). Envolve, ainda, uma análise documental nos registros do sistema – ator não humano - ANH e entrevistas semi-estruturadas com os atores humanos - AH, em diferentes instâncias: coordenadores vinculados à gestão da EaD e aos cursos de graduação, professores e tutores dos respectivos cursos. O objetivo principal consistiu em compreender de que forma as informações fornecidas pelo sistema estão sendo compreendidas pelos diferentes atores, bem como perceber se as articulações dessas informações estão sendo eficientes no sentido de contribuir para a criação de estratégias que possam minimizar a evasão e potencializar a permanência dos estudantes nessa modalidade. Os principais resultados obtidos indicam, no que se refere ao ANH – sistema, que esse fornece um conjunto de informações, as quais, quando articuladas, evidenciam que a maior evasão ocorre antes da avaliação, ou seja, da realização dos Graus B e C. No que se refere aos AH da gestão em EaD e dos cursos, bem como os professores e tutores, os resultados evidenciam compreensões distintas e singulares sobre a evasão e a permanência, bem como sobre a forma de articular as informações fornecidas pelo sistema, na criação de estratégias para minimizar a evasão e potencializar a permanência do estudante na EaD, embora esses AH integrem a mesma equipe mas com funções diferentes. Esse resultado se manifesta como controvérsia, as quais são acessadas por meio da abertura das caixas pretas, no momento em que esses atores são instigados a refletir sobre as estratégias utilizadas. As relações dos AH se apresentam distanciadas uns dos outros, principalmente na disciplina de maior evasão. Produzem uma comunicação pouco eficiente ou ineficiente, gerando obstáculos no campo metodológico da disciplina, dificultando possíveis mudanças positivas e restringindo o desenvolvimento dos processos pedagógicos. A estratégia de contatar o AH estudante, se usado de forma adequada, pode colaborar e abrir possibilidades para a melhor compreensão do fenômeno da evasão e ampliação da visão estratégica institucional. Como principal contribuição da dissertação apresenta-se o diagrama das mediações, ou seja, o desenho da distribuição da mobilidade, os movimentos na construção, na busca por uma estratégia que possa minimizar a evasão e potencializar a permanência do estudante em EaD. / The currrent dissertation of Master’s Degree, developed in the context of Grupo de Pesquisa Educação Digital GPe-dU UNISINOS/CNPq (Research Group on Digital Education GPe-dU UNISINOS/CNPq) bound to Linha de Pesquisa Educação, Desenvolvimento e Tecnologias do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação (Line of Research Education, Development and Technologies of the Program of Postgraduate in Education) investigated how the strategies used were made by different actors, enfolded in the context of Distance Education (EaD) to minimize evasion and potentiate the permanence of students in this modality, having as subsidy a set of information and indexes generated by a system, the oGVWise, which makes use of data mining and Learning Analytics. The research is exploratory, of qualitative nature, having as a basis the Teoria Ator-Rede (the Actor-Net Theory) (LATOUR, 2012) and makes use of the methodology of the cartography of controversies.(LATOUR, 2012). It still enfolds a documental analysis in the registers of the system – non human actor – NHA, and semi-structured interviews with the human actors – HA, in different instances: Coordinators bound to the managements of EaD and to the courses of graduation, professors and tutors of the related courses. The main goal consisted in understanding how information given by the system are being understood by different actors, as well in noticing if the articulations of these information are being efficient in the sense of contributing to the creation of strategies that might minimize the evasion and potentiate the permanence of students in this modality. The main results obtained indicate, in what relates to NHA – system, that this one gives a set of information, which when articulated, give evidence that the major evasion happens before the evaluations, it means, of the accomplishment of Degrees B and C. Relating to HA of management in EaD and of the courses, as well as the professors and tutors, the results give evidence to different and singular comprehensions on evasion and permanence, as well as on the way of articulating the information given by the system, on the making of strategies to minimize evasion and potentiate the permanence of the student in EaD, however these HA integrate the same team. This result is manifested as controversy, which are accessed by means of opening the black boxes, in the moment that these actors are instigated to reflect on the used strategies. There is is a detachment among HA, mainly in the discipline of major evasion, that produce little efficient communication or inefficient generating obstacles in the methodological field of the subject, making difficult possible positive changes and restraining the development of pedagogical processes. The strategy of contacting a HA student, if a proper way is used, might collaborate and open possibilities to the comprehension of the phenomenon of evasion and enlargement of the institutional strategic vision. As main contribution of the dissertation the diagram of mediations is presented, it means, the design of the distribution of mobility, the movements of construction, the search for a strategy that might minimize evasion and potentiate the permanence of the student in EaD.

For many years universities communicated generic graduate attributes (e.g. global citizenship) their students have acquired after studying. Graduate attributes are skills and competencies that are relevant for both employability and other aspects of life (Barrie, 2004). Over the past years and due to the Bologna Process, the focus on competencies has also found its way into universities' curricula. As a consequence, curricula were adapted in order to convey students both in-depth knowledge of a particular area as well as generic competences (Bologna Working Group on Qualifications Framework, 2005, Appendix 8). For example, students with a Master's degree should be able to “communicate their conclusions, and the knowledge and rationale underpinning these, to specialist and non-specialist audiences clearly and unambiguously” (p. 196). This shift has been supported by the demand of the labour market for students that have achieved social and personal competencies, in addition to in-depth knowledge (Heidenreich, 2011). On course level, this placed emphasis on collaborative learning, which had led to “greater autonomy for the learner, but also to greater emphasis on active learning, with creation, communication and participation” (Downes, 2005). The shift to collaborative learning has been supported by existing learning theories and models (Brown et al., 1989; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978), which could explain the educational advantages. For example, collaborative learning has proved to promote critical thinking and communications skills (Johnson and Johnson, 1994; Laal and Ghodsi, 2012). As Haythornthwaite (2006) advocates: “collaborative learning holds the promise of active construction of knowledge, enhanced problem articulation, and benefits exploring and sharing information and knowledge gained from peer-to-peer communication” (p. 10). The term collaboration defies clear definition (Dillenbourg, 1999). In this article, cooperation is seen as the division of labour in tasks, which allows group members to work independently, whereas collaboration needs continuous synchronisation and coordination of labour (Dillenbourg et al., 1996; Haythornthwaite, 2006). Therefore, cooperation allows students to subdivide task assignments, work relatively independent, and to piece the results together to one final product. In contrast, collaboration is seen as a synchronous and coordinated effort of all students to accomplish their task assignment resulting in a final product where “no single hand is visible” (Haythornthwaite, 2006, p. 12). Due to the debate about digital natives (Prensky, 2001) and “students' heavy use of technology” in private life (Luo, 2010, p. 32), teachers have started to explore possible applications of modern technology in teaching and learning. Especially wikis have become popular and gained reasonable attention in higher education. Wikis have been used to support collaborative learning (e.g. Cress and Kimmerle, 2008), collaborative writing (e.g. Naismith et al., 2011), and student engagement (e.g. Neumann and Hood, 2009). A wiki is a “freely expandable collection of interlinked Web ‘pages’, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database, where each page is easily editable by any user” (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001, p. 14; italics in original). Thereby, wikis enable the collaborative construction of knowledge (Alexander, 2006). With the intention to take advantage of the benefits connected with collaborative learning, this doctoral thesis focuses on the facilitation of collaboration in wikis to leverage collaborative learning. The doctoral thesis was founded on a constructivist understanding of reality. The research is associated with three different research areas: adoption of IT, computer-supported collaborative learning, and learning analytics. After reviewing existing literature, three focal points were identified that correspond to the research gaps in these research areas: factors influencing students' use of wikis, assessment of collaborative learning, and monitoring of collaboration. The aims of this doctoral thesis were (1) to investigate students' intentions to adopt and barriers to use wikis in higher education, (2) to develop and evaluate a method for assessing computer-supported collaborative learning, and (3) to map educational objectives onto learning-related data in order to establish indicators for collaboration. Based on the research aims, four studies were carried out. Each study raised unique research questions that has been addressed by different methods. Thereby, this doctoral thesis presents findings covering the complete process of the use of wikis to support collaboration and thus provides a holistic view on the use of wikis in higher education.

Les travaux pratiques représentent une composante incontournable de l'apprentissage. Toutefois, leur mise en œuvre au sein de laboratoires physiques requiert des infrastructures souvent coûteuses pour les institutions de formation qui peuvent ainsi difficilement faire face à la forte augmentation du nombre d'étudiants. Dans ce contexte, les laboratoires virtuels et distants (VRL) représentent une alternative pour assurer le passage à l'échelle des activités pratiques à moindre coût. De nombreux travaux de recherche ont émergé au cours de la dernière décennie en se focalisant sur les problématiques techniques et technologiques induites par ces nouveaux usages, telles que la fédération, la standardisation, ou la mutualisation des ressources de laboratoires. Cependant, les récentes revues de littérature du domaine mettent en exergue la nécessité de se préoccuper davantage des facettes pédagogiques liées à ces environnements informatiques innovants dédiés à l'apprentissage pratique. Dans cet objectif, nos travaux exploitent les traces issues des activités réalisées par les apprenants lors de sessions d'apprentissage pratique pour mettre en œuvre les théories socio-constructivistes qui sont au cœur de l'apprentissage exploratoire, et ainsi favoriser l'engagement et le processus de réflexion des étudiants. À partir de la littérature traitant des relations sociales entre apprenants, nous identifions dans un premier temps un ensemble de critères pour la conception de systèmes d'apprentissage pratique engageants. En s'appuyant sur une architecture de cloud computing, nous avons ensuite réalisé Lab4CE, un environnement web pour l'enseignement de l'Informatique capable de masquer la complexité des tâches de gestion des laboratoires, mais surtout d'exposer des capacités éducatives avancées. En effet, Lab4CE repose sur les Learning Analytics pour supporter différentes formes d'apprentissage telles que la collaboration, la coopération ou l'entraide entre pairs, mais également pour fournir des outils d'awareness et de réflexion visant à promouvoir l'apprentissage en profondeur pendant et après les activités pratiques. Plusieurs expérimentations en contexte d'apprentissage réel et présentiel montrent une évaluation positive de Lab4CE par les apprenants en terme d'utilisabilité, qu'ils s'appuient de manière significative sur nos outils d'awareness et de réflexion, mais que des artefacts supplémentaires sont nécessaires pour accroître leur engagement spontané dans des interactions sociales d'apprentissage. De plus, ces expérimentations soulignent l'existence d'une corrélation significative entre l'engagement des étudiants dans la plateforme et les stratégies d'apprentissage qu'ils mettent en œuvre d'une part, et leur performance académique d'autre part. Ces premiers résultats nous permettent d'affirmer que les théories socio-constructivistes sont un levier à l'engagement et à la réflexion dans les VRL. Ils nous invitent à confronter notre approche à d'autres modalités d'apprentissage, mais aussi à intégrer de nouvelles sources d'informations pour approfondir nos analyses du comportement et ainsi renforcer nos contributions à une meilleure prise en compte de l'apprentissage pratique dans les EIAH. / Practical activities, used in exploratory learning, represent a major component of education: they make learners acquire not only knowledge, but also skills and attitude, and they help them bridging the gap between theories and the real world within they are applied. However, the physical laboratories hosting these activities rely on expensive infrastructures that make very difficult for institutions to cope with the high increase of the students' population. Within this context, virtual and remote laboratories (VRL) bring an affordable alternative to provide practical activities at scale. Numerous research works have come up for the last decade; they mainly focused on technological issues such as the federation of remote laboratories, their standardization, or the pooling of the resources they provide. Nevertheless, the recent literature reviews highlight the need to pay more attention to the educational facets of these innovative learning environments. With that purpose in mind, our works make use of the learners' traces collected through their practical learning sessions to sustain socio-constructivist theories, on which practical activities rely on, and thus to engage students in their learning tasks and further their reflection. Starting from the study of scientific research, we identify as a first step a set of criteria required to design practical learning systems that support social interactions between learners. We then developed Lab4CE, a web-based environment for Computer Science education. This environment relies on a cloud computing architecture to provide learners with their own virtual resources, and hides the complexity of the inherent management tasks while offering advanced educational capabilities. Indeed, Lab4CE builds on learning analytics to enable different forms of learning such as collaboration, cooperation, or peer assistance, but also to supply learners as well as teachers awareness and reflection tools that aim at promoting deep learning during and after practical activities. We carried out several experimentations in authentic and hands-on learning contexts. They stressed the fact that learners evaluate positively the usability of Lab4CE, and they significantly rely on our awareness and reflection tools. However, extra artifacts are required to increase their spontaneous engagement in social learning interactions. Moreover, theses experimentations suggested a significant correlation between, on the one hand, student's activity in the environment and the learning strategies they apply and, on the other hand, their academic performance. These first results allow us to assess that socio-constructivist theories leverage engagement and reflection within VRL. They also invite us to put our approach into practice in other learning settings, but also to extend the sources of information to deal with our behavioral analyses in depth, and thus to enhance our contributions regarding the adoption of practical learning within technological environments.

Submitted by Lara Oliveira (lara@ufersa.edu.br) on 2017-04-10T19:19:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RafaelCS_DISSERT.pdf: 3240038 bytes, checksum: a153143f6eb3e6da1d442bbd9089c122 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vanessa Christiane (referencia@ufersa.edu.br) on 2017-04-13T14:41:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 RafaelCS_DISSERT.pdf: 3240038 bytes, checksum: a153143f6eb3e6da1d442bbd9089c122 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vanessa Christiane (referencia@ufersa.edu.br) on 2017-04-13T15:04:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 RafaelCS_DISSERT.pdf: 3240038 bytes, checksum: a153143f6eb3e6da1d442bbd9089c122 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-13T15:04:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RafaelCS_DISSERT.pdf: 3240038 bytes, checksum: a153143f6eb3e6da1d442bbd9089c122 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The growing evolution of technology in conjunction with its computing resources has provided new expectations in several areas of research such as industry, health and education. Such integration of technology in these environments combined with its widespread use has led to an increase in the volume of stored data. Therefore, researchers then realized the possibility of analyzing this large volume information in order to extract knowledge, so that this information can, for example, help to support on making decision. When applied in the education area, the collection, measurement and analysis of educational data to identify factors that may impact positively or negatively the teaching process are called Learning Analytics. Given this perspective, this work presents an assessment tool of behavioral actions of tutors teaching mode disciplines distance, so that through this be possible to evaluate the behavior of tutors and classes, as well as identify tutor behaviors that may or may not be related to the behavior of the class. With the information resulting from this work, one can better understand the impact of the behavior of tutors in the teaching mode groups at a distance, and enables pedagogical interventions guided in concise information in order to alleviate the problems faced by this type of education / A crescente evolução da tecnologia, em conjunto com seus recursos computacionais, tem propiciado novas expectativas em várias áreas de pesquisa, tais como na indústria, saúde e educação. A inserção da tecnologia nesses ambientes, combinada com sua larga utilização, tem gerado um aumento no volume dos dados armazenados. Diante disso, pesquisadores perceberam a possibilidade de analisar esse grande volume de informações a fim de extrair conhecimento, de modo que essas informações possam, por exemplo, auxiliar no suporte à tomada de decisão. Quando aplicadas no âmbito educacional, a coleta, a medição e a análise de dados educacionais, a fim de identificar fatores que possam impactar positivamente ou negativamente o processo de ensino, são denominadas Learning Analytics. Diante dessa perspectiva, o presente trabalho apresenta uma ferramenta de avaliação das ações comportamentais dos tutores de disciplinas da modalidade de ensino a distância, de modo que, por meio desta, seja possível avaliar os comportamentos de tutores e turmas, bem como identificar quais os comportamentos do tutor que podem ou não estarem relacionados com os comportamentos da turma. Com as informações resultantes deste trabalho, pode-se compreender melhor o impacto dos comportamentos dos tutores nas turmas da modalidade de ensino a distância, além de possibilitar intervenções pedagógicas pautadas em informações objetivas, a fim de atenuar os problemas enfrentados por essa modalidade de ensino / 2017-04-10

Submitted by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2018-06-04T13:02:42Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Filipe Dwan.pdf: 3617202 bytes, checksum: 21261ba9c1db7a40af29004bd0bb6f52 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2018-06-04T13:02:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Filipe Dwan.pdf: 3617202 bytes, checksum: 21261ba9c1db7a40af29004bd0bb6f52 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-04T13:02:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Filipe Dwan.pdf: 3617202 bytes, checksum: 21261ba9c1db7a40af29004bd0bb6f52 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-29 / CS1 (first year programming) classes are known to have a high dropout and non-pass rate. Thus, there have been many studies attempting to predict and alleviate CS1 student performance. Knowing about student performance in advance can be useful for many reasons. For example, teachers can apply specific actions to help learners who are struggling, as well as provide more challenging activities to high-achievers. Initial studies used static factors, such as: high school grades, age, gender. However, student behavior is dynamic and, as such, a data-driven approach has been gaining more attention, since many universities are using web-based environments to support CS1 classes. Thereby, many researchers have started extracting student behavior by cleaning data collected from these environments and using them as features in machine learning (ML) models. Recently, the research community has proposed many predictive methods available, even though many of these studies would need to be replicated, to check if they are context-sensitive. Thus, we have collected a set of successful features correlated with the student grade used in related studies, compiling the best ML attributes, as well as adding new features, and applying them on a database representing 486 CS1 students. The set of features was used in ML pipelines which were optimized with two approaches: hyperparameter-tuning with random search and genetic programming. As a result, we achieved an accuracy of 74.44%, using data from the first two weeks to predict student final grade, which outperforms a state-of-the-art research applied to the same dataset. It is also worth noting that from the eighth week of class, the method achieved accuracy between 85% and 90.62%. / Em média, um terço dos alunos no mundo reprova em disciplinas de introdução à programação de computadores (IPC). Assim, muitos estudos vêm sendo conduzidos a fim de inferir o desempenho de estudantes de turmas de IPC. Inicialmente, pesquisadores investigavam a relação das notas dos alunos com fatores estáticos como: notas no ensino médio, gênero, idade e outros. Entretanto, o comportamento dos estudantes é dinâmico e, dessa forma, abordagens orientadas aos dados vêm ganhando atenção, uma vez que muitas universidades utilizam ambientes web para turmas de programação como juízes online. Com efeito, muitos pesquisadores vêm extraindo e tratando os dados dos estudantes a partir desses ambientes e usando-os como atributos de algoritmos de aprendizagem de máquina para a construção de modelos preditivos. No entanto, a comunidade científica sugere que tais estudos sejam reproduzidos a fim de investigar se eles são generalizáveis a outras bases de dados educacionais. Neste sentido, neste trabalho apresentou-se um método que emprega um conjunto de atributos correlacionados com as notas dos estudantes, sendo alguns baseados em trabalhos relacionados e outros propostos nesta pesquisa, a fim de realizar a predição do desempenho dos alunos nas avaliações intermediárias e nas médias finais. Tal método foi aplicado a uma base de dados com 486 alunos de IPC. O conjunto de atributos chamado de perfil de programação foi empregado em algoritmos de aprendizagem de máquina e otimizado utilizando duas abordagens: a) ajuste de hiperparâmetros com random search e b) construção do pipeline de aprendizagem de máquina utilizando algoritmos evolutivos. Como resultado, atingiu-se 74,44% de acurácia na tarefa de identificar se os alunos iriam ser reprovados ou aprovados usando os dados das duas semanas de aula em uma base de dados balanceada. Esse resultado foi estatisticamente superior ao baseline. Destaca-se ainda que a partir da oitava semana de aula, o método atingiu acurácias entre 85% e 90,62%.

For many years universities communicated generic graduate attributes (e.g. global citizenship) their students have acquired after studying. Graduate attributes are skills and competencies that are relevant for both employability and other aspects of life (Barrie, 2004). Over the past years and due to the Bologna Process, the focus on competencies has also found its way into universities' curricula. As a consequence, curricula were adapted in order to convey students both in-depth knowledge of a particular area as well as generic competences (Bologna Working Group on Qualifications Framework, 2005, Appendix 8). For example, students with a Master's degree should be able to “communicate their conclusions, and the knowledge and rationale underpinning these, to specialist and non-specialist audiences clearly and unambiguously” (p. 196). This shift has been supported by the demand of the labour market for students that have achieved social and personal competencies, in addition to in-depth knowledge (Heidenreich, 2011). On course level, this placed emphasis on collaborative learning, which had led to “greater autonomy for the learner, but also to greater emphasis on active learning, with creation, communication and participation” (Downes, 2005). The shift to collaborative learning has been supported by existing learning theories and models (Brown et al., 1989; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978), which could explain the educational advantages. For example, collaborative learning has proved to promote critical thinking and communications skills (Johnson and Johnson, 1994; Laal and Ghodsi, 2012). As Haythornthwaite (2006) advocates: “collaborative learning holds the promise of active construction of knowledge, enhanced problem articulation, and benefits exploring and sharing information and knowledge gained from peer-to-peer communication” (p. 10). The term collaboration defies clear definition (Dillenbourg, 1999). In this article, cooperation is seen as the division of labour in tasks, which allows group members to work independently, whereas collaboration needs continuous synchronisation and coordination of labour (Dillenbourg et al., 1996; Haythornthwaite, 2006). Therefore, cooperation allows students to subdivide task assignments, work relatively independent, and to piece the results together to one final product. In contrast, collaboration is seen as a synchronous and coordinated effort of all students to accomplish their task assignment resulting in a final product where “no single hand is visible” (Haythornthwaite, 2006, p. 12). Due to the debate about digital natives (Prensky, 2001) and “students' heavy use of technology” in private life (Luo, 2010, p. 32), teachers have started to explore possible applications of modern technology in teaching and learning. Especially wikis have become popular and gained reasonable attention in higher education. Wikis have been used to support collaborative learning (e.g. Cress and Kimmerle, 2008), collaborative writing (e.g. Naismith et al., 2011), and student engagement (e.g. Neumann and Hood, 2009). A wiki is a “freely expandable collection of interlinked Web ‘pages’, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information - a database, where each page is easily editable by any user” (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001, p. 14; italics in original). Thereby, wikis enable the collaborative construction of knowledge (Alexander, 2006). With the intention to take advantage of the benefits connected with collaborative learning, this doctoral thesis focuses on the facilitation of collaboration in wikis to leverage collaborative learning. The doctoral thesis was founded on a constructivist understanding of reality. The research is associated with three different research areas: adoption of IT, computer-supported collaborative learning, and learning analytics. After reviewing existing literature, three focal points were identified that correspond to the research gaps in these research areas: factors influencing students' use of wikis, assessment of collaborative learning, and monitoring of collaboration. The aims of this doctoral thesis were (1) to investigate students' intentions to adopt and barriers to use wikis in higher education, (2) to develop and evaluate a method for assessing computer-supported collaborative learning, and (3) to map educational objectives onto learning-related data in order to establish indicators for collaboration. Based on the research aims, four studies were carried out. Each study raised unique research questions that has been addressed by different methods. Thereby, this doctoral thesis presents findings covering the complete process of the use of wikis to support collaboration and thus provides a holistic view on the use of wikis in higher education.:Introduction Theoretical foundation Research areas and focal points Research aims and questions Methods Findings Conclusions References Essay 1: Factors influencing wiki collaboration in higher education Essay 2: Students' intentions to use wikis in higher education Essay 3: Facilitating collaboration in wikis Essay 4: Using fsQCA to identify indicators for wiki collaboration