The design, development, and implementation of student-facing learning analytics dashboards

• Published in: Journal of computing in higher education Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 572 - 598
• Main Authors: Bodily, Robert, Ikahihifo, Tarah K., Mackley, Benjamin, Graham, Charles R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-12-2018; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Access to Information; Dashboards; Data Analysis; Data Collection; Distance learning; Education; Educational Technology; Focus Groups; Higher Education; Knowledge Level; Learning; Learning Analytics; Learning and Instruction; Metacognition; Motivation Techniques; Online Courses; Program Effectiveness; Skill Development; Skills; Student Attitudes; Students; Technology Uses in Education; Iterative design; Dashboard; Learning analytics; Learning dashboards; Student reporting tools; Data visualization
• ISSN: 1042-1726; 1867-1233
• DOI: 10.1007/s12528-018-9186-0

We have designed, developed, and implemented a student-facing learning analytics dashboard in order to support students as they learn in online environments. There are two separate dashboards in our system: a content recommender dashboard and a skills recommender dashboard. The content recommender helps students identify gaps in their content knowledge; the skills recommender helps students improve their metacognitive strategies. We discuss the technical requirements needed to develop a real-time student dashboard as well as report our inquiry into the functionality students want in a dashboard. The dashboards were evaluated with focus groups and a perceptions survey. Students were positive in their perceptions of the dashboards and 79% of the students that used the dashboards found them user-friendly, engaging, useful, and informative. One challenge encountered was low student use of the dashboard. Only 25% of students used the dashboard multiple times, despite favorable student perceptions of the dashboard. Additional research should examine how to motivate and support students to engage with dashboard feedback in online environments.