Student-Facing Educational Dashboard Design for Online Learners

Abstract

The current shift from traditional classrooms to online learning in higher education calls for more attention to self-regulated learning. This research is motivated by the growing interest in potential of using learning analytics dashboard (LAD) to increase individuals' self-regulation by creating visibility into their performance in various applications. This study explores how data visualization can be integrated with online learning to improve learners' performance through enhancing their skills in planning and organization. We are working on the design of a comprehensive LAD, focusing on micro-level of learning analytics to support learning activities of students. The LAD includes the following two features to enhance students' self-regulation in online learning: (1) a function to track students' progress compared to other students' over time; (2) reminders to help students with upcoming deadlines and auto-generating to do lists. The hypothesis is that the LAD will increase students' engagement, motivation, and self-regulation in an online learning environment. This study is significant because it contributes to the body of knowledge by exploring how student-generated data can be used to improve self-regulated learning. The practical contribution of this study is to create a personalized LAD for students based on the learner-generated data to benefit students' organization skill, planning skill, and motivation.