Tag Archives: Moodle

Ep4] New Moodle project, Acquiring data

This week I discuss a new Moodle project and how I’ve been using R to process and visualise students use of educational materials.

Part 1] A New Problem

What is Moodle? Note that my University doesn’t use the latest version of Moodle.

Part 2] Acquiring data

How to download logs from Moodle

Part 3] General Points about R from the project

See ‘Scripts’ in this chapter

Part 4] Plot_ly

Examples of using Plotly with r, this free online text book teaches more about how to use Plotly

ELESIG meeting about learning analtyics

ELESIG = elearning evaluation special interest group.

I’ve just been to this meeting at the Royal Veternary college in Camden, London.  The talks were interesting and there was some interesting discussion.

Problems engaging staff and students with Learning Analytics:  It generally seemed as if Learning Technologists as a group are interested in what I call ‘small data’ i.e. Real time Learning Analytics for tutors and students as opposed to ‘Big data’ which tends to be of interest to management and is often not real time.  However, not many people have projects producing results that can be discussed.  There are barriers to the use of small data from :

  • students (not that interested),
  • tutors (this is too much like Big Brother for me and/or not interested)
  • Institutions (no clear leadership, not producing drivers to implement little data

Office Mix:  I was surprised to find that my implementation of Office Mix (earlier post on Recording a presentation using PowerPoint Mix and see ‘training‘ for details of my teaching on use of Office Mix) as a way of introducing small data to students in the flipped MSc I’m supporting was actually advanced to where a lot of other people were.  As I said to the group, the analytics of Office Mix promises much but I have yet to see it in action.

 Michelle Milner of UEL:  Michelle presented work that UEL has been doing around producing dashboards showing little data to students and tutors.  She also explained how they had been using Kontext to track students’ use of Ebooks.  One interesting fact she said was that they had done focus groups with students and that by discussing learning analytics students got more interested in the topic!  To me this suggests a point made on a JISC podcast about learning analytics I heard recently:  reports need to be delivered by a tutor as part of a one on one discussion if at all possible.  Michelle noted that in the real world that’s a big ask for a tutor already pushed for time.

Andy Kons:  Presented about an excel based program he’d produced to show analytics from Moodle.