Blackboard (LMS) activity and student performance
Levering UMBC’s robust data/technology architecture, this project analyzed students’ detailed log-in patterns on the Learning Management Systems. It explored its correlational and causal relationships with academic performance in the future.
Collaborators: Dr. Jiaqi Gong, Dr. Zhiyuan Chen (UMBC IS)
Student Researcher: Dr. Varun Mandalapu (Defended Ph.D. Thesis in Fall 2021)
Bumpy Journey
Gateway courses are critical milestones that students must pass to proceed with planned majors. Failing gateway courses and the subsequent major switch is one of the early “shocks” that students have to grapple with as part of their college experience. These experiences could profoundly impact students’ self-efficacy, academic trajectory, and career outcomes. Data provides rich opportunities for examining the related educational process and student outcomes from multiple perspectives, including learning, teaching, and program design points of view. This project is broadly related to curricular analytics, a subcategory of learning analytics that analyzes students’ data beyond a single course, with the ultimate goal of informing students’ macro-level decisions in majors and course-taking.
Collaborators: Dr. Zhiyuan Chen (UMBC IS), Dr. Sreedevi Sampath (UMBC IS)
Funding sources: UMBC DoIT Mini-Grant
Student Researcher:
- Khalyl Konkobo (UMBC, IS Undergraduate student, Data Science Scholar, Spring 2022)
Distraction Project
It is well-known that distraction may cause the deterioration of learning. However, there is little understanding of how the distraction process unfolds over time and what aspects of the distraction process are primarily detrimental to learning. This project analyzes the detailed distraction process with a dataset collected from a group of high school students who were interrupted by a chatbot while watching TED talk videos. We use temporal and semantic analysis to shed light on the relationship between the distraction process and learning outcome.
Collaborator: Dr. Lin Lin Lipsmeyer (Southern Methodist University, School of Education)
Student Researcher: Jacob C (High school student, Spring & Summer 2022)