In an era of remote learning, school leaders need access to analytics that paint a clear picture of student engagement with digital learning resources. Without that data, it’s difficult to know whether students are engaged and learning or struggling and in need of support.
We’ve added new features to ClassLink Analytics over the past few months to make it easier to understand engagement with digital learning resources. Below we outline each new feature along with details about how it will support you and your schools. We developed these features based on research about how people interpret and use data. You can see a list of the studies we consulted at the end of the post.
Let’s dig into these new ClassLink Analytics features and how they can help.
(All of these new features are available to ClassLink Administrators. You can access your analytics by clicking the ClassLink Analytics icon inside your ClassLink LaunchPad account.)
Compare Usage
Research tells us it is difficult to make sense of data without appropriate comparison points, so we added heat maps to help you compare the time spent on application usage among schools and students.
Understand Context
We added the ability to display calendar events on graphs to give context around technology usage data. This helps you quickly see, for example, if low usage was due to a holiday or special event. You can upload calendar files containing events such as in-service days, sporting events, or other events that provide context about usage.
Investigate Issues
Based on research, we also know that simplifying information is critical in using data effectively, so we added more actionable data reports. These include a new report on failed logins so administrators can investigate any technical issues students may have when logging in to ClassLink.
Support At-Risk Students
We know identifying at-risk students and offering support leads to better student engagement. To help, we added new filters and a date range feature to the Users with No Logins report so you can quickly find students who are not engaging with instructional technology and provide the support they need.
Get the Complete Picture
Data is most useful when users can connect various sources of data. With this in mind, we added a new Export Settings feature so you can have exports of raw data delivered on a schedule, including logins per day by school, app time usage by school, and more.
We designed these new features to give you more insight into student engagement—whether they are learning in class or remotely—so you and your staff can do your best to help all students continue to learn. Whether you discover technical difficulties, students who need social and emotional support or apps with low usage, with this data, you’re better equipped to support all students.
To see how some of these new features work, check out the illustrations below.
Export Settings
ClassLink administrators can access Export Settings under Settings. You can set exports to deliver raw data about launches, logins, or time spent on applications.
Heat Maps
Heat maps show logins and time spent on application usage by school. These heat maps allow leaders to quickly compare weekly application usage and see which students are engaged and showing up for remote learning.
Clicking on a day for a particular school from the district's master list (above) will pull up a heat map for all students and teachers at that individual school.
Clicking on a day for a user will display the applications accessed by that person and the time spent on each application.
Calendar Events
Calendar events provide context for instructional technology usage. Events are displayed in the graphs on the Dashboard and in the Logins Summary tab. A description of the event(s) appears in a tooltip when hovering over the bar or line for a day.
Stay tuned as many more exciting additions to Analytics are in the works. If you are looking for more insights on how to use Analytics data, please check out our ‘Webinars for Admins’ application inside your LaunchPad account. In case you missed it, you can also read this past blog post where we highlight four ways ClassLink’s My Classes feature eases the challenges of remote learning.
References
- Arnold, K. E., & Pistilli, M. D. (2012, April). Course signals at Purdue: Using learning analytics to increase student success. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (pp. 267-270).
- Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (1991). Cognitive load theory and the format of instruction. Cognition and instruction, 8(4), 293-332.
- Few, S. (2006). Information dashboard design: The effective visual communication of data. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
- Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Park, V., & Datnow, A. (2009). Co-constructing distributed leadership: District and school connections in data-driven decision-making. School leadership and Management, 29(5), 477-494.
- Rienties, B., Herodotou, C., Olney, T., Schencks, M., & Boroowa, A. (2018). Making sense of learning analytics dashboards: A technology acceptance perspective of 95 teachers. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(5).
- Santos, J. L., Govaerts, S., Verbert, K., & Duval, E. (2012, April). Goal-oriented visualizations of activity tracking: a case study with engineering students. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (pp. 143-152).
- Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Penguin.
- Hastings, J. S., & Weinstein, J. M. (2008). Information, school choice, and academic achievement: Evidence from two experiments. The Quarterly journal of economics, 123(4), 1373-1414.
- Saket, B., Endert, A., & Demiralp, Ç. (2018). Task-based effectiveness of basic visualizations. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 25(7), 2505-2512.