Over the past two weeks, while I've been participating in this course I have also been having discussions F2F with a group of five instructors, one student work and an instructional designer on what we would like analytics to show us.
So we've talked and argued a lot. We listened to John Fritz's Elluminate session while writing our ideas up on whiteboard in a classroom. We debated if analytics were even required and we've also sent emails back and forth.
I found that just asking an instructor what analytics they want isn't as effective as showing them possibilities, letting them think on it and then discussing it.
We looked at analytics available in Desire2Learn, Google Analytics and Assessment Applets http://analysis.ikit.org/w/index.php/Assessment_Applets
So on an individual course level (for an online course) here's what we came up with:
Wish list:
Visual Design - Need a Dashboard that easily allows instructors to see data
The look of Google Analytics rather than the small font blue text on white that is provided by the current LMS- Desire2Learn.
View of analytics for the course and individual students
Warning system based on individual student participation
·Green line/ Yellow line / Red line graphic
·Could be based on the following variables
o Logins during the week
o Read discussions
o Read content
o Post discussions
o Various Criteria of Discussion quality
Motion Charts so instructors can look deeper at trends
Score cards that show site average data for the course
The two applets that impressed everyone were the vocabulary growth http://analysis.ikit.org/w/index.php/Vocabulary_Growth and writing measures http://analysis.ikit.org/w/index.php/Writing_Measures
Would like to see this type of assessment in all courses.
And the most grandiose request - an analytic that could help the instructor (prior to the essay assignment or test) determine whether the student was truly having problems with the content rather than just not putting in the time and effort required.