Relationship between students’ online learning behavior and course performance: What contextual information matters?

Abstract

This study examines whether including more contextual information in data analysis could improve our ability to identify the relation between students’ online learning behavior and overall performance in an introductory physics course. We created four linear regression models correlating students’ pass-fail events in a sequence of online learning modules with their normalized total course score. Each model takes into account an additional level of contextual information than the previous one, such as student learning strategy and duration of assessment attempts. Each of the latter three models is also accompanied by a visual representation of students’ interaction states on each learning module. We found that the best performing model is the one that includes the most contextual information, including instruction condition, internal condition, and learning strategy. The model shows that while most students failed on the most challenging learning module, those with normal learning behavior are more likely to obtain higher total course scores, whereas students who resorted to guessing on the assessments of subsequent modules tended to receive lower total scores. Our results suggest that considering more contextual information related to each event can be an effective method to improve the quality of learning analytics, leading to more accurate and actionable recommendations for instructors.