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Learning analytics (LA) constitutes a key opportunity to support learning design (LD) in blended learning environments. However, details as to how LA supports LD in practice and information on teacher experiences with LA are limited. This study explores the potential of LA to inform LD based on a one-semester undergraduate blended learning course at a Norwegian university. Our findings indicate that creating valuable connections between LA and LD requires a detailed analysis of student checkpoints (e.g., online logins) and process analytics (e.g., online content and interaction dynamics) to find meaningful learning behaviour patterns that can be forwarded to teachers in retrospect to support the redesign of courses. Moreover, the teachers in our study found the LA visualizations to be valuable for understanding student online learning processes, but they also requested the timely sharing of aggregated LA visualizations in a simple, easy-to-interpret format, yet detailed enough to be informative and actionable. We conclude the paper by arguing that the potential of LA to support LD is improved when multiple levels of LA are considered.

The literature until 2020 has forecasted a significant uptake of learning analytics (LA) to support learning design in higher education. However, there remain only a few investigations into teachers' course design practices and their perspectives on LA as a tool to support their design practices. This paper presents findings from an examination of 16 university teachers' design practices and perspectives on LA at two Norwegian universities (The University of Oslo and Oslo Metropolitan University). On one hand, findings identified situational factors, feedback sources and teachers' intuition as key influencers of teachers' course design decisions. On the other hand, guided by principles of the technology acceptance model, this study identified mixed reactions amongst teachers regarding the awareness, understanding and potential use of LA to support course design practices. In particular, most teachers appreciated the formative and normative value of LA to provide more objective evidence about students' learning patterns and to shape learning trajectories, but some were skeptical about the evaluative role where LA is used to evaluate teachers' and students' performance based on unnuanced data (e.g. no theory guidance) with limited depth in observation. This article contributes to the understanding of factors fundamental to linking LA to teachers' course design practices by synthesizing findings to propose a 'bi-directional LA-course design' conceptual framework that clarifies key elements that influence teachers' design practices and highlighting their implications for LA integration.

Learning analytics (LA) is a fast-growing field but adoption by teachers remain limited. This paper presents the results of a review of 18 LA frameworks and discusses how they have tried to address prominent challenges in LA adoption. The results show that researchers have made significant advances in developing appropriate frameworks to conceptualise LA adoption among teachers, and have advanced considerably in connecting LA and learning theory. However, few frameworks are concretised into technological artefacts and concrete data streams. Moreover, there is a need to empirically validate and put into use the most promising existing frameworks. We hope that this review will be informative for teachers who have little LA experience but are interested in adopting LA in authentic practice.

Purpose: The present study proposes action-breakdown-repair (ABR) as a pedagogical model and 3D virtual worlds as technology, to bridge the gap between curricular goals and students out of school technology experiences, referred to as the educational gap. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study combining design-based research (DBR) and a case study was used with video observation as a data collection method. ABR is demonstrated by an empirical analysis of learning activities with ©Minecraft (hereafter MC) and ©Second Life[superscript TM] (hereafter SL) used in two teacher education programs. Findings: Teachers and students could use the technology with some initial training. Experience in gameplay, collaboration and problem solving eased the transitioning into curricular activities. The teachers integrated domain knowledge by giving students tasks that involved the creation of domain-specific artifacts and role-play scenarios. In total, two dilemmas of educational gap closing were found and discussed: learning domain knowledge vs learning technology and breakdown in action vs breakdown in understanding. Research limitations/implications: Automated feedback (critiquing) adapted to students' individual needs while building and role-playing in MC or SL to off-load some of the teachers' work in scaffolding design activities in the classroom is a direction for further work. Practical implications: The model can provide guidance for teachers and other stakeholders who are in the process of integrating creative technologies like visual programming, design environments and collaboration tools in K-12 education. Originality/value: A novelty of the present research is treating ABR as a pedagogical model and closing the educational gap.

This article presents a study of EssayCritic, a computer-based writing aid for English as a foreign language (EFL) that provides feedback on the content of English essays. We compared two feedback conditions: automated feedback from EssayCritic (target class) and feedback from collaborating peers (comparison class). We used a mixed methods approach to collect and analyze the data, combining interaction analysis of classroom conversations during the writing process and statistical analysis of students' grades. The grades of students in both classes improved from pre-test to post-test but in different ways. The students in the target class included more ideas (content) in their essays, whereas the students in the comparison class put more emphasis on the organization of their ideas. We discuss our findings to identify strengths and weaknesses of our approach, and we end the paper by suggesting some directions for further research.

In this article we investigate the use of latent semantic analysis (LSA), critiquing systems, and knowledge building to support computer-based teaching of English composition. We have built and tested an English composition critiquing system that makes use of LSA to analyze student essays and compute feedback by comparing their essays with teacher's model essays. LSA values are input to a critiquing component to provide a user interface for the students. A software agent can also use the critic feedback to coordinate a collaborative knowledge-building session with multiple users (students and teachers). Shared feedback provides seed questions that can trigger discussion and extended reflection about the next phase of writing. We present the first version of a prototype we have built and report the results from three experiments. We end the paper by describing our plans for future work.

In this article, we investigate human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI) in an educational context where pupils used block-based programming in small groups to solve tasks given by the teacher. We used a design-based research approach in which we, together with the teachers, created a maker space for explorative science learning and organised teaching interventions wherein the pupils met online three hours a week for 16 weeks for an entire school year. Due to COVID-19, data were collected through Zoom, with collaborative learning situations captured through screen sharing and online communication using webcams. We employed three data analysis techniques: interaction analysis, visual artifact analysis, and thematic analysis. We developed an analytical framework for integration using thematic coding that combined concepts from computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and domain-oriented design environments. We report the following findings: 1) Three types of rules between design units were identified with visual artifact analysis: latent, generic, and domain-specific rules; 2) two types of CSCL artifacts (technology and discussions) were intertwined and developed in parallel, along with a computer-based scaffolding scenario that offloads domain-specific scaffolding from humans to computers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning analytics (LA) is a fast-growing field but adoption by teachers remain limited. This paper presents the results of a review of 18 LA frameworks and discusses how they have tried to address prominent challenges in LA adoption. The results show that researchers have made significant advances in developing appropriate frameworks to conceptualise LA adoption among teachers, and have advanced considerably in connecting LA and learning theory. However, few frameworks are concretised into technological artefacts and concrete data streams. Moreover, there is a need to empirically validate and put into use the most promising existing frameworks. We hope that this review will be informative for teachers who have little LA experience but are interested in adopting LA in authentic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study of EssayCritic, a computer-based writing aid for English as a foreign language (EFL) that provides feedback on the content of English essays. We compared two feedback conditions: automated feedback from EssayCritic (target class) and feedback from collaborating peers (comparison class). We used a mixed methods approach to collect and analyze the data, combining interaction analysis of classroom conversations during the writing process and statistical analysis of students' grades. The grades of students in both classes improved from pre-test to post-test but in different ways. The students in the target class included more ideas (content) in their essays, whereas the students in the comparison class put more emphasis on the organization of their ideas. We discuss our findings to identify strengths and weaknesses of our approach, and we end the paper by suggesting some directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, different perspectives on the role of the teacher in a classroom equipped with personal digital assistants (PDAs) are presented. We report on four classroom studies conducted in two countries, Norway and the USA. The overall aim is to understand the use of new tools in different contexts. The key question that we explore concerns the teachers’ pedagogical use of the new tool and why certain tools are adopted and others are not. In one case, the activities simulated the affordances and constraints of the tools used prior to the PDA. In the other case, the activities harnessed the affordances and constraints offered by the successor tool, the PDA. We raise the question as to why these tools were used in two different ways. We analyse our findings in terms of sociocultural theory and concepts of human–computer interaction. Finally, we summarize our results and discuss some educational implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents and analyzes data from a case study in customer-initiated software product development. We have observed and participated in system development activities in a commercial software house (company) over a period of two years. The company produces project-planning tools for the oil and gas industry, and relies on interaction with customers for further development of its products. Our main research question is how customers and professional developers engage in mutual development mediated by shared software tools (products and support systems). We have used interviews with developers and customers as our main source of data, and identified the activities (from use to development) where customers have contributed to development. We analyze our findings in terms of co-configuration, meta-design and modding to name and compare the various stages of development (adaptation, generalization, improvement request, specialization, and tailoring). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Clegg and Kolodner on the school-based learning communities of children and another by Riverin and Stacey on the changes in an online community of Canadian teachers.

In this article we investigate the use of latent semantic analysis (LSA), critiquing systems, and knowledge building to support computer-based teaching of English composition. We have built and tested an English composition critiquing system that makes use of LSA to analyze student essays and compute feedback by comparing their essays with teacher's model essays. LSA values are input to a critiquing component to provide a user interface for the students. A software agent can also use the critic feedback to coordinate a collaborative knowledge-building session with multiple users (students and teachers). Shared feedback provides seed questions that can trigger discussion and extended reflection about the next phase of writing. We present the first version of a prototype we have built and report the results from three experiments. We end the paper by describing our plans for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study following the activities of super users and local developers during the adoption of a new business application by an accounting firm in Scandinavia (referred to as the Company). The Company launched a program to train super users to help with this process because of the complexity of the new system, a generic multipurpose application system replacing several older nonintegrated systems. The system, Visma Business (VB), is a comprehensive financial and accounting application delivered as a set of components that need to be configured for domain-specific tasks, depending on the clients the accountants will interact with. The super users and the local end user developer (also called the application coordinator) were asked to take part in this study. We documented their activities empirically and analytically, using interviews to gather data and draw on aspects of Activity Theory for the conceptual framework for analysis. Our findings provide insight into end-user development (EUD) activities with VB : what roles were created by the Company, what roles emerged spontaneously during the process, what the various user groups (regular users, super users, and the application coordinator) did, and how EUD was coordinated between super users and the application coordinator. Our findings show that super users fill an important niche as mediators between regular users and local developers and can make a significant contribution to the success of EUD efforts in a nontechnical application domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe our experiences with two networked learning environments: Adobe Connect (AC) and Second Life (SL) for supporting teaching and learning in distance education courses. We collected data in two separate case studies: one in Norway (AC) and the other in the United States (SL), using different but comparable methods of data analysis (qualitative methods). We compare the two environments through the lens of problem-based learning (PBL), using four application characteristics of PBL (learner activity, collaborative learning, feedback, and valuation of previous knowledge). AC's strength is its easy-to-use interface and its high-quality audio and video streaming that support facial expression and gesturing in communication. The SL interface is more complicated to learn, but it allows for movement in virtual reality by an avatar and interaction with three-dimensional (3D) objects. The avatar makes the users feel less apprehensive during communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several concepts are used to describe ethnographic approaches for investigating the Internet; competing concepts include virtual ethnography, netnography, digital ethnography, web-ethnography, online ethnography, and e-ethnography. However, as the field matures, several writers simply call their approach "ethnography" and specify new fields of practice. In this paper, we will explore the content of ethnographic approach for investigating the Internet and the direction in which this new field of ethnography is moving, that is, whether it is the study of blended worlds or online worlds. We start by introducing the emerging field sites or fields of practice. Then, we describe how participant observation and other data collection techniques are carried out. Next, we describe how ethnographic practice is understood within the emerging field. Finally, we discuss some possible changes in the ethnographic landscape: unobtrusive methods, the communal-commercial relationship, and team-ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]