Learning Analytics to Support Student Interaction and Learning Design: Initial Report on a Human-Centered Prototype Design

This chapter presents a case study of designing a learning analytics dashboard powered by a machine-learning model to support interaction and engagement in online discussions. Learning analytics are becoming mainstream as more learning management systems (LMSs) embed different types of analytic data based on student interactions with the content and each other. However, our chapter focuses on a specific design case where a learning analytics dashboard (LAD) was designed to support learning and learning design in a particular context. The visualizations in the LAD were generated by automated machine-learning analyses of student-generated discussion data, and we describe how technology can be used by instructors within the learning context to finely tune the design of interactive activities in online courses.