Higher education institutions, teachers, and students face new difficulties and opportunities resulting from the introduction of modern technology into the learning process. The widespread of learning environments that integrate online learning and face-to-face learning may pose some opportunities as well as difficulties for some groups of students' self-regulation skills. Providing automated prompts may help to support those students with insufficient self-regulation skills. The use of learning analytics and multiple methods and data sources (data triangulation) may give better insight into the self-regulation process. The objective of the proposed research is to explore the students' evaluation of the usefulness of prompts implemented in a blended learning environment. A secondary objective is to develop and evaluate a real-time dashboard designed to notify teachers of student responses to deployed prompts. The research methodology will be grounded in action research and empirical research. The scientific contribution will be achieved through the development of artefacts and the performance of empirical research to advance understanding of the student's self-regulation in a blended learning environment. learning analytics, self-regulated learning, prompts, blended learning, dashboards, higher Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, September 12-16,
education
In the past two decades, blended learning in
higher
education
has
been
increasingly
widespread [1]. The effectiveness of blended
learning in relation to traditional learning is
continuously reviewed [
Mildenberger [
2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative identify for
which (or disciplines) a learning format is most appropriate. specific blended
Several teachers and institutions strive to
develop personalised learning approaches in an
effort to meet the needs of each student to the
greatest extent possible. To be able to customise
the approach, it is necessary to examine the
views and habits of students. For example,
information systems deployed in the teaching
and learning process are sources of valuable
educational data that may be used to monitor
and assess the teaching and learning process
[
Learning analytics as a research area is
focused on the "measurement, collection,
analysis and reporting of data about learners
and their contexts, for purposes of
understanding and optimising learning and the
environments in which it occurs" [
Tsai et al. [
Self-regulated learning includes cognitive,
metacognitive, behavioural, motivational, and
emotional aspects of learning. This area has
been extensively researched in the field of
educational psychology, and among the best
known and most applied models is the
Zimmerman’s model of self-regulated learning,
that consists of three main phases: (a)
forethought, (b) performance, and (c)
selfreflection [
In previous research, feedback and prompts
have been identified as the most important
elements that encourage self-regulated learning
[
The proposed research will also consider learning design as an important element in educational interventions.
Specifically, these research questions will drive the proposed research.
RQ1: To what extent are students aware of self-regulation elements, such as metacognitive activities before/during/after learning, environmental structuring, help seeking, and time management in the blended learning environment?
RQ2: In a blended learning environment, which types of prompts (cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, or contentrelated) do groups of students find most useful?
RQ3: Is there a difference in perceived usefulness of the same type of prompt based on the mode of learning (online and face-to-face)?
RQ4: How does the implementation of specific prompts affect (a) student’s engagement (b) results achieved in formative assessment (c) overall learning satisfaction?
What distinctions exist amongst student groups?
RQ5: Which components of the real-time dashboard for displaying student feedback on prompt implementation are important to students and/or teachers?
This proposed research will utilise a
mixedmethod practical action research design.
According to Creswell [
The initial literature review showed the research gap in the area of learning analytics approaches in investigating prompts for supporting students’ self-regulation. During the preparation phase, an additional literature review will be conducted to synthesise the findings of prior research, identify appropriate measurement instruments, and provide an overview of the outcomes of prior empirical interventions.
The intervention will be designed as an iterative process, with a pilot trial followed by the main study. The interventions are intended to be implemented at two higher education institutions in Croatia, aiming to target around 340 students and 3 teachers. Ethical approval from participating higher education institutions will be obtained.
Teachers will be closely involved in preparations for implementation (analysis of current learning design of a course, defining specific goals of prompt implementation, finding appropriate learning types, and defining prompts based on selected models).
During this phase, the appropriate measurement instruments will be evaluated (linguistic evaluation) or, if necessary, a new measurement instrument will be developed. 2.2.
This activity is a key component of the research proposal. During this phase, the developed artefacts will be used in the real environment.
The dominant research method used will be
pretest-posttest nonequivalent groups design, a
type of quasi-experimental design. One group
of students will be exposed to an intervention,
while the other group will not. The two groups
will then be compared. According to previous
research [
During this stage, the measurement instruments will be evaluated in a real environment. 2.3.
In this phase, monitoring activities and providing teachers with adequate technical support will be the primary activities. Data will be collected via system logs, measurement instruments and prompt feedback.
To monitor student progress, teachers will have access to a real-time dashboard with visualisations of student responses. 2.4.
Teachers will receive the intervention results during the phase of reflection. In addition, they will assess the real-time dashboard that was accessible during the observing phase.
In addition, a think-aloud protocol [
A literature review with the focus on available measurement instruments (selfregulated learning, engagement, satisfaction and other relevant constructs) is currently in progress.
Based upon the initial reading of the literature and good practice identified, a prototype of plug-in for prompt implementation has been developed in Moodle LMS Platform (Figure 2). The plug-in makes it possible to embed prompts wherever an HTML editor is available.
Prototype of teacher’s dashboard has been also developed (Figure 3).
In order to test the feasibility of the proposed study, pre-pilot study has been conducted. 38 students gave consent to participate in the prepilot study. The students were second-year students of the informatology programme at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. 36 out of 38 students were female, while two were male.
Lessons learned from the pre-pilot study: • the suggested plug-in is appropriate for prompt implementation and gives considerable design flexibility with respect to learning design • students are more likely to rate prompts during face-to-face meetings than during online sessions • the teacher acknowledged the advantages of monitoring student responses, and the input gained could be useful for designing course improvements • think-aloud sessions conducted with two students gave valuable insights into the perception of implemented prompts • adjustment of rating scale should be considered (10 or 7-level scale) • it would be useful to collect additional demographic information in order to better understand behavioural differences among students.
The expected contributions of the proposed research to the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) domain are: • synthesis of empirical interventions and the results on supporting self-regulated learning with prompts using learning analytics in a blended learning environment • development and evaluation of artefacts related to prompt implementation in real environment • better understanding of students’ selfregulation in blended learning environment using prompts • results of empirical research on supporting self-regulated learning in blended learning environment using prompts and learning analytics. After completing experimental part of the proposed research, differences across student groups can be expected in terms of student engagement, formative assessment outcomes, and overall learning satisfaction. The combination of accessible students' demographic information with their responses and system data will provide insight into students' self-regulation practises and awareness.
This work has been fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2020-02-5071.
[1] M. Lundin, A. Bergviken Rensfeldt, T.
Hillman, A. Lantz-Andersson, L. Peterson, Higher education dominance and siloed knowledge: a systematic review of flipped classroom research, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 20 (2018). doi: 10.1186/s41239-018-0101-6