Higher education for the 21st century continues to promote discoveries in the field through learning analytics (LA).  The problem is that the rapid embrace of of LA diverts educators’ attention from clearly identifying requirements and implications of using LA in higher education.  LA is a promising emerging field, yet higher...

This paper presents a dialogical tool for the advancement of learning analytics implementation for student retention in Higher Education institutions. The framework was developed as an outcome of a project commissioned and funded by the Australian Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching. The project took a mixed-method approach including a...

Based on Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice, this research project attempted to revitalize the principles by merging them with Merrill’s (2006) Different Levels of Instructional Strategy. The aim was to develop, validate, and standardize a measurement instrument (DLISt7) using a pretest-posttest Internet quasi-experiment. It was proposed...

Online learning continues to grow at post-secondary institutions across the United States, but many question its efficacy, especially for students most at-risk for failure. This paper engages that issue. It examines recent research on the success of community college students who take online classes and explores similar comparisons using 656,258...

This paper summarizes initial field-test results from data analytics used in the work of the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project, on the “ICT Literacy — Learning in digital networks” learning progression.  This project, sponsored by Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, aims to help educators around the world...

Students’ re-enrollment in the subsequent semester after their first semester at a four-year institution is a strong predictor of retention and graduation.  This is especially true for students who transfer from a community college to a four-year institution because of the many external or non-academic factors influencing a student’s decision...

The popularity of online learning has boomed over the last few years, pushing instructors to consider the best ways to design their courses to support student learning needs and participation. Prior research suggests the need for instructor facilitation to provide this guidance and support, whereas other studies have suggested peer...

This paper addresses a relatively unexplored area in the field of learning analytics: how analytics are taken up and used as part of teaching and learning processes. Initial steps are taken towards developing design knowledge for this “middle space,” with a focus on students as analytics users. First, a core...

This study aimed to identify misconceptions in medical student knowledge by mining user interactions in the MedU online learning environment. Data from 13000 attempts at a single virtual patient case were extracted from the MedU MySQL database. A subgroup discovery method was applied to identify patterns in learner-generated annotations and...

This issue of Online Learning also contains four articles outside the theme of learning analytics. This section contains papers investigating MOOCs, a comparison of anxiety levels and the “imposter phenomenon” between online and classroom students, and a qualitative analysis of information behaviors among online students....

This paper examines activity patterns, participant demographics, and levels of satisfaction in multiple MOOC offerings at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from August 2012–December 2013.  Using the following guiding questions: “Who are MOOC participants, how do they participate, and were they able to get what they wanted out of...

This paper utilizes a case-study design to discuss global aspects of massive open online course (MOOC) assessment. Drawing from the literature on open-course models and linguistic gatekeeping in education, we position freeform assessment in MOOCs as both challenging and valuable, with an emphasis on current practices and student resources. We...

High anxiety levels have been associated with high levels of the imposter phenomenon (IP), a negative experience of feeling like a fraud. This study was designed to explore IP among graduate students and to determine whether a difference exists between online graduate students and traditional graduate students. The theoretical foundation...

In a study of the information behaviors of graduate students enrolled in an online Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program, it was determined that learners engage in threaded discussions not only for cognitive purposes but for affective reasons as well.  The information sharing among students was particularly prolific...