Large-group (n > 8) co-located collaboration has not been adequately studied because it demands different conceptual framings than those used to study small-group collaboration, while also posing pragmatic constraints on data collection. Working within these pragmatic constraints, we use video data to devise an indicator of the current…

Central to the mission of most educational institutions is the task of preparing the next generation of citizens to contribute to society. Schools, colleges, and universities value a range of outcomes--e.g., problem solving, creativity, collaboration, citizenship, service to community--as well as academic outcomes in traditional subjects. Often…

Educational data science (EDS) is an emerging, interdisciplinary research domain that seeks to improve educational assessment, teaching, and student learning through data analytics. Teachers have been portrayed in the EDS literature as users of pre-constructed data dashboards in educational technologies, with little consideration given to them as…

As a further step towards maturity, the field of learning analytics (LA) is working on the definition of frameworks that structure the legal and ethical issues that scholars and practitioners must take into account when planning and applying LA solutions to their learning contexts. However, current efforts in this direction tend to be focused on…

Online environments can cultivate what have been referred to as 21st century skills and capabilities, as youth contribute, pursue, share, and interact around work and ideas. Such environments also hold great potential for addressing digital divides related to the development of such skills by connecting youth in areas with fewer resources and…

Learning analytics (LA) are summaries, visualizations, and analyses of student data that could improve learning in multiple ways, for example by supporting teachers. However, not much research is available yet concerning how LA may support teachers to diagnose student progress and to intervene during student learning activities. There is evidence…

Dealing with the vast quantities of text that students generate in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other large-scale online learning environments is a daunting challenge. Computational tools are needed to help instructional teams uncover themes and patterns as students write in forums, assignments, and surveys. This paper introduces to the…

A core goal for most learning analytic projects is to move from small-scale research towards broader institutional implementation, but this introduces a new set of challenges because institutions are stable systems, resistant to change. To avoid failure and maximize success, implementation of learning analytics at scale requires explicit and…

Learning analytics has been as used a tool to improve the learning process mainly at the micro-level (courses and activities). However, another of the key promises of learning analytics research is to create tools that could help educational institutions at the meso- and macro-level to gain better insight into the inner workings of their programs…

Promoting blog content is a social activity--a means of communicating one student's appreciation of another student's work. This article explores the feasibility of using student promotions of content, in a blogosphere, to identify quality content, and implications for students and instructors. We show that students actively and voluntarily…