• Open Access

Relationship between students’ online learning behavior and course performance: What contextual information matters?

Zhongzhou Chen, Mengyu Xu, Geoffrey Garrido, and Matthew W. Guthrie
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16, 010138 – Published 15 June 2020

Abstract

This study examines whether including more contextual information in data analysis could improve our ability to identify the relation between students’ online learning behavior and overall performance in an introductory physics course. We created four linear regression models correlating students’ pass-fail events in a sequence of online learning modules with their normalized total course score. Each model takes into account an additional level of contextual information than the previous one, such as student learning strategy and duration of assessment attempts. Each of the latter three models is also accompanied by a visual representation of students’ interaction states on each learning module. We found that the best performing model is the one that includes the most contextual information, including instruction condition, internal condition, and learning strategy. The model shows that while most students failed on the most challenging learning module, those with normal learning behavior are more likely to obtain higher total course scores, whereas students who resorted to guessing on the assessments of subsequent modules tended to receive lower total scores. Our results suggest that considering more contextual information related to each event can be an effective method to improve the quality of learning analytics, leading to more accurate and actionable recommendations for instructors.

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  • Received 21 March 2020
  • Accepted 22 May 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010138

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

Zhongzhou Chen, Mengyu Xu, Geoffrey Garrido, and Matthew W. Guthrie

  • Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, 4111 Libra Drive, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA and Department of Statistics and Data Science, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA

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Issue

Vol. 16, Iss. 1 — January - June 2020

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