Learning Analytics Mobile Application for the Bucharest University of Economic Studies’ Students

Abstract

IntroductionIn the last years there was an increasingly interest in personal and professional development and acquirement of as many information as possible, especially by development of alternative ways of study like online courses or training sessions for free. It is harder to keep the students interested when they have access to a lot of information interactively presented. So, it was necessary to develop a solution to provide proactive feedback and predict success or failure of a student in order to guide the learning process in such a way that offer the necessary information and maintain the students focused.This methodology called learning analytics implies the measurement and analysis of data about learners aimed at optimizing the process of learning, providing better information and a deep understanding of the field of interest for those involved. [1]Of course, there are many other ways to solve the problems in this area, reforming the learning process and introducing interactive teaching methods being only a small part of what can be done. However, it is very important to know the main cause and the factors that led to that problem in order to solve it, so learning analytics came to show the elements essentially to know and the main directions to the solution, making it the most suitable response. Just as it happens in any methodology, there are some limitations for learning analytics. According to [2], some of the limitations for learning analytics are:* Information belongs to different systems and there is not a unique system;* Education-technology industry has not enough standards and is not cooperating;* The governments don't focus on structures and focus on content;* Researchers don't focus on the processes in an ecosystem and focus on algorithms or teaching;* The target of the tools and reports is not the professional capital and capacity building;* In the relation between governments, school, leadership, teachers, students and the community does not exist enough trust.Taking these into account, there is a necessity to develop a solution to solve the main problems connected to learning process. Because of limitations of learning analytics, especially regarding a unified education system for all the institutions, we have focused only on students from Bucharest University of Economic Studies by developing an app for their needs. This software solution is designed to communicate with SIMUR database and to provide some key functionalities for every student, beyond their year of study or their faculty. Learning analytics means various benefits for all stakeholders so this application provides several reports and predictions to help both students and teachers by improving the learning process.As innovations, the current software solution comes with specific elements in order to sup- port students by providing methods of efficient time planning such as Gantt charts or predictions for specific facts as chances for a scholarship.2Related WorkLearning analytics became an important topic when referring to teaching and learning process, to students' success and to new methods of teaching and how useful they are. Frequently, papers related to learning analytics are focusing on what students will know at the end of the learning process and the elements that have an influence to this aspect, but, in order to understand and to use at the proper level the power of learning analytics a deeper look is needed.An analysis of data in the teaching process was done even before the widespread use of technology in order to obtain a feedback about the work done in the previous period, these calculations being done by hand. After that, learning analytics came to automate the process and to take care of all the data.Learning analytics has contributed very much in growth of effectiveness in the education field. Research has begun to be more intense in the learning analytics community after the appearance of massive online courses, online video-based learning, educational applications and the high availability of all kinds of computing devices. …