CourseVis: A Graphical Student Monitoring Tool for Supporting Instructors in Web-Based Distance Courses

User Modelling and User Adaptive Systems Activity
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Research Group
School of Computing, University of Leeds

People: Riccardo Mazza (University of Lugano), Vania Dimitrova (University of Leeds)

Funding: Riccardo Mazza's visit at Leeds was supported by a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Motivation

The World Wide Web provides great opportunities for creating virtual classrooms of learners and instructors. Course Management Systems (CMS) are widely used by instructors to produce content material, prepare assignments and tests, maintain on-line discussions, and manage distance classes. Because CMS are popular, their effectiveness is very important and has been extensively studied. A number of problems with using CMS in distance learning have been reported, e.g. students may feel isolated due to the limited contact with the instructor and other students, can get disorientated in the course hyperspace, may lose their motivation, and often find it difficult to manage without appropriate institutional support. The effective use of CMS in distance education requires that instructors have a way to diagnose when a problem might arise or has arisen, so that they can take appropriate actions to prevent or overcome that problem.

Course management systems accumulate large log data of student activities in on-line courses and usually have built-in monitoring features that enable the instructors to view some statistical data, such as a student's first and last login, the history of pages visited, the number of messages the student has read and posted in discussions, marks achieved in quizzes, etc. Instructors may use this information to monitor the students' progress and to identify potential problems. However, tracking data is usually provided in a tabular format, is often incomprehensible, with a poor logical organization, and is difficult to follow. As a result, web log data is used by a few skilled and technically advanced distance learning instructors.

We propose a novel approach for the use of tracking data to support teachers. Information Visualization techniques are used to graphically render student tracking data collected by CMS. By inspecting and manipulating the graphical representations, the instructors can form mental models of what is happening in their classes. Thus, potential problems in distance learning could be identified promptly and addressed effectively.

Description of CourseVis

CourseVis is a system that takes a novel approach of using web log data generated by course management systems (CMS) to help instructors become aware of what is happening in distance learning classes. Specifically, techniques from Information Visualization are employed to graphically render complex, multidimensional student tracking data.

The design of CourseVis was based on the results of a survey conducted to find out what information about distance students instructors may need when they run courses with CMS, and to identify possible ways to help instructors acquire this information. Based on the survey, several graphical representations were generated to help distance learning instructors get a better understanding of social, behavioral, and cognitive aspects related to learners. CourseVis is implemented as an extension of the WebCT course management system. The evaluation of CourseVis has shown that the representations help instructors to quickly and more accurately grasp information about social, cognitive, and behavioural aspects of students. The provided information was regarded by the teacher as very useful for managing distance courses. It was noted that the graphical representations provided in CourseVis would help instructors identify early, and even prevent, some of the problems with distance learning, e.g. students who did not communicate might feel isolated, a student not visiting the course material might be confused or would become a potential drop-out, long discussion treads on a topic may highlight problems experienced by learners. Many of these tasks would be tedious and cognitively demanding when the tools provided in traditional course management systems are used. This suggests that the effectiveness of CMS can be improved by integrating Information Visualization techniques to generate appropriate graphical representations, similar to those produced in CourseVis.

Examples

Discussion plot rotated to show dates and students who initiated discussions

Discussion plot rotated to show dates and topics of discussions

Cognitive Matrix showing students' knowledge on course topics

See Riccardo Mazza's web page for more examples .

Successor

Currently, the ideas from CourseVis have been extended by Riccardo Mazza and his colleagues from the University of Lugano in the GISMO tool, which is integrated within the Moodle open source course management system.

Publications

Mazza, R., & Dimitrova, V. (under review), CourseVis: A Graphical Student Monitoring Tool for Facilitating Instructors in Web-Based Distance Courses, submitted to the Int. Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) .

Mazza, R., & Dimitrova, V. (2005). Visualising Student Tracking Data to Support Instructors in Web-Based Distance Education, 9th IEEE Conference on Information Visualisation IV05 , London, UK, 6-8 July 2005.

Mazza, R., & Dimitrova, V. (2004). Visualising Student Tracking Data to Support Instructors in Web-Based Distance Education, Proceedings of the 13th International World Wide Web Conference WWW04 , pp. 154-161 ACM Press (best alternate track paper).

Mazza, R., & Dimitrova, V. (2003). Using Information Visualisation to Facilitate Teachers in Distance Learning. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED2003 .

Last Updated by Vania Dimitrova on 1st November 2005.