Opportunities to improve learning analytics for student support when using online assessment tools

Abstract

Knowing when a student is being productive in an online learning environment is challenging to discern from online trace data. Custom built assessment tools, integrated into a learning management system (LMS), offer a way to obtain finer-grained data not commonly available in existing systems. An exploratory observational study of 1,822 assessment submissions in an online course of 500 students was conducted. All assessments were submitted utilising a new online assessment tool that offered embedded resources, feedback and tracked when words were typed or pasted into the tool. Students were hesitant to consistently use the online editor, moderately used the embedded resources and heavily utilised the feedback. There was moderate evidence that whether or not a student viewed the previous assessments feedback was a better indicator of future assessment success than LMS activity.