Why Singapore’s English Teachers Should Embrace Singlish, Not Fight It
Is it time for Singaporean educators to embrace Singlish as a legitimate learning tool? What the Research […]
Read More
Research Bites
Research Bites
Enhancing Student Collaboration in Knowledge Building through Learning Analytics
“Scaffold Tracker” and “Word Cloud” – How can teachers leverage data generated from these easy-to-use learning analytics tools to support students in their collaborative inquiry?
Key Takeaways for Teachers
Teachers can:
- Extract data from learning analytics tools like Scaffold Tracker and Word Cloud to visualize how and what students are discussing, respectively.
- Use the learning analytics data to detect critical junctures where interventions are required.
- Facilitate discussions for students to reflectively engage with the learning analytics data by:
(a) Identifying how they can improve their collaboration with the Scaffold Tracker data:
(b) Creating new lines of deeper inquiry with words from the Word Cloud:
What the Research Study Is About
This study explores how teachers can utilize learning analytics interventions to enhance student agency when they engage in a digital pedagogy approach known as Knowledge Building (KB) on an online platform called Knowledge Forum (KF). By employing tools like Scaffold Tracker and Word Cloud, teachers can facilitate reflective discourse, promote productive collaboration, and encourage deeper inquiry among students.
Key Findings
Teacher Roles in Implementing Learning Analytics Interventions
- Teachers can use analytics data as evidence to identify behaviors that hinder productive collaboration, such as students not building on each other’s ideas.
- Rather than interpreting data for students, teachers can facilitate student reflection on analytics visualizations, enabling them to make their own assessments about their collaborative efforts and identify what they need to do better as collaborators or what new inquiry lines need to be explored.
- After students have developed a plan for improvement from reflecting on the learning analytics data, teachers can create new spaces (like “rise-above views”) for them to put the plan into action.
Impact on Student Learning
Following the learning analytics interventions,
- More students began to consider the potential of ideas they had rejected or ignored earlier to be new lines of inquiry for the class, shifting their focus from their individual perspectives to addressing gaps in collective knowledge, and
- More students began to contribute questions and explanations to the discourse that were more conceptual in nature, shifting from superficial ideas to developing deeper understandings.
Practical Implementation
- Simple, easy-to-use analytics tools (Scaffold Tracker and Word Cloud) are effective for real-time classroom use even without extensive technical expertise.
- Structured discussion questions help students interpret analytics data productively and evaluate their own discourse effectively.
- Creating distinct digital spaces for new lines of inquiry helps students in organizing and deepening their collaborative discourse.
This research summary was generated by Coral AI and has been reviewed by the authors.
