There are some things on the ants/social navigation work here: http://
dspace.ou.nl/bitstream/1820/485/1/OSEE+20051111.pdf
It uses the same sort of model as a recommender system, so you could
build one based on something like Taste (http://
taste.sourceforge.net/) if you're interested in that sort of thing.
You could always feed in the final grade percentile as a weighting
back into the system to give the success-factor aspect after a cycle
has completed.
I've heard a few people mention recently the intervention case that
Tom raised, and this is I think an example of CRM-style usage. I've
come across examples of CRM systems that are designed to spot
disengaging customers (using analysis of past trends) and notify
customer services staff to take appropriate actions, which is the
same sort of thing really.
re: Checking resources. Hit counts aren't very expressive. Referrals
are far more indicative - these indicate there is a conversation
taking place _about_ the resource, not merely a clicking of the link
to the resource.
re: Notifications. Is this really necessary? Why not use RSS/Atom to
subscribe to these sort of things?
-S
[removed the digital signature again...]
On 13 Feb 2006, at 12:29, Adam Marshall wrote:
> Thanks Scott
>
> We were definitely thinking that one of the main thrusts of our
> tracking
> would be for teachers to see what sort of hit rate they were
> getting on
> their material.
>
> We've had a number of comments like "what's the point of putting
> material up
> if I cant tell whether anybody is looking at it?".
>
> Data protection issues aside for the moment, tutors also want to be
> able to
> see if students who are struggling are actually looking at the
> material that
> they've been pointed towards.
>
> Our other main driver is to augment Bodington's 'notifications'
> facility -
> this reports when somebody posts a message to a forum in which an
> interest
> has been registered. We will extend this to external wiki's, forums
> and the
> like. At the moment, when we add an external tool to Bodington, at
> best the
> user will get a message from Bodington AND a message from the new tool
> (maybe the new tool will not post this sort of info), what we
> really want is
> one 'notification' message containing a summary from all external
> apps.
>
> I like your use case of "people who successfully completed the
> course did X
> next", but that does rely on knowing that the person was actually
> successful. I guess in our view, tutors could look at what successful
> students have done and compare this to what the failures (!) have
> done?
>
> Adam
>
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf
> | Of Scott Wilson
> | Sent: 13 February 2006 11:27
> | To: [log in to unmask]
> | Subject: Re: [VLES] Tracking of student activity in VLEs and e-
> learning
> | tools
> |
> | Hi Adam,
> |
> | Tracking is something that quite frankly baffles me. The assessment
> | things mentioned make sense - assessing the products of learning is
> | what we use as the basis for grading and accreditation after all.
> | However, tracking is about measuring the process rather than the
> | product, and has an ambiguous status in e-learning generally.
> Vendors
> | make a big point of including tracking capabilities - its
> basically a
> | log of activity pretty similar to the regular server log, with some
> | graphs and so on.
> |
> | Clearly there is feedback in the sense of "did any students actually
> | read this thing I posted?", but this is much less indicative than
> | students writing something themselves along the lines of "this was
> | really useful! Thanks!". I think relying on hits to gauge the
> | effectiveness of resources and posts is pretty unsatisfying compared
> | to qualitative data in terms of responses. Although correlations may
> | be useful (see below).
> |
> | There is tracking in the sense of reporting presence for funding
> | purposes - that is, trying to assess drop-out and withdrawal by
> level
> | of participation. But thats typically at a rolled-up level rather
> | than in the detail items of server logs - basically an activity
> | percentile. I can see a use for this, especially in relation to some
> | of the FE funding processes, but its not really what you're
> after, is
> | it? Its not really about the learning and teaching per se.
> |
> | Finally there is the use of tracking data for intelligence
> analysis -
> | so using the VLE as a data source for analytical CRM to identify
> | trends that can be fed back in terms of strategy and policy
> | development. I'm not sure how much of this goes on. The example of
> | correlating resource use with success factors is interesting,
> however
> | this is only really useful if used as a direct feedback signal to
> the
> | learner - there was some research at OUNL on providing "trails"
> along
> | the lines of "people who successfully completed the course did X
> | next" using collaborative filtering techniques. This appears to be
> | successful.
> |
> | Maybe the best way is to look at this backwards - if your VLE didn't
> | have ANY tracking, what would you miss?
> |
> | - S
> |
> | permalink: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?
> | entry=20060213125118
> |
> | /-/-/-/-/-/
> | Scott Wilson
> | [log in to unmask]
> | http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott
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> |
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