# Using Virtual Learning Environment Data for the Development of Institutional Educational Policies
## 3 Materials and Methods
### Data Understanding
The results are shown in Table 3.  
Figure 5: Interactions per weeks. Figure 6: Sum and mean interactions by subject. As shown in Table 3, the only case where the distribution was normal was for the Biology course considering all 16 weeks. In this case, the T-Test showed a statistical difference between the means of the two groups. For the other cases, the Mann-Whitney test showed statistical differences between the medians of the two groups. These results allowed us to conclude that the students' usage of VLE was associated with their subjects' final status: success or fail. Another interesting observed attribute is the number of subjects the student was enrolled in and the relation with their final status. Figure 8 shows a box-plot for both groups of students versus the number of subjects enrolled. Even though the mean and median of subjects for both groups were the same (Success: median = 6.0 and mean = 5.93; Fail: median = 6.0; and mean = 6.47), a Mann-Whitney test showed a significant statistical difference between them (statistic = 2,138,630.0, \(p\)-value < 0.05). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Status** & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Shapiro**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**[PERSON]–Whitney**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Mean**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Median**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**\(t\)-Test**} \\  & & **Statistic** & \(p\)**-Value** & & & & & **Statistic** & \(p\)**-Value** \\ \hline BIOAll & Success & 0.959 & 0.138 & & - & 442.8 & 465 & \multirow{2}{*}{\(-2.194\)} & \multirow{2}{*}{0.0322} \\  & Failed & 0.961 & 0.684 & & & 285.1 & 316 & & \\ BIO W4 & Success & 0.841 & 0.00 & & 16.55 & 11 & & \\  & Failed & 0.673 & 0.00 & & 7 & 2.5 & & \\ BIO W8 & Success & 0.897 & 0.001 & 188.5 & 0.00 & 81.18 & 92 & - & - \\  & Failed & 0.772 & 0.001 & & 34.93 & 3.5 & & \\  & Success & 0.757 & 0.00 & & 113.7 & 85 & & \\  & Failed & 0.791 & 0.00 & & 94.72 & 73 & & - \\  & Success & 0.433 & 0.00 & & 3.38 & 2.5 & & \\  & Failed & 0.393 & 0.00 & & 114,591.5 & 0.00 & 1.19 & 0 & - & - \\  & Success & 0.503 & 0.00 & & 114,197.0 & 0.00 & 16.97 & 7.5 & \\  & Failed & 0.278 & 0.00 & & & 4.58 & 0 & - & - \\  & Success & 0.814 & 0.00 & & 1,061,837.5 & 0.00 & 295.1 & 235 & - & - \\  & Failed & 0.892 & 0.00 & & & 324.2 & 259.5 & - & - \\  & Success & 0.290 & 0.00 & & 1,148,365.0 & 0.05 & 0.59 & 4 & - & - \\  & Failed & 0.350 & 0.00 & & & 0.43 & 0 & - & - \\  & Success & 0.279 & 0.00 & & & 0.87 & 13 & & - \\  & Failed & 0.514 & 0.00 & & & 0.85 & 0 & - & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Statistical analysis. Figure 7: Distribution of interactions by courses. Figure 8 shows that students who failed in the subjects presented a wider dispersion in the number of subjects. Students who had success, tended to enroll in five to eight subjects, while students who failed tended to enroll in three to nine subjects. One of the possible reasons for this discrepancy may be related to the fact that students may enroll in subjects that they are not necessarily interested in taking (as they are allowed to take the final exams without attending classes for those subjects). This may contribute to the fact that some subjects have a high number of students enrolled although they are not effectively participating. For instance, one given subject from the Nursing course had 590 students enrolled. This is a relatively common practice in Udelar; however, the data seem to show that students regularly attend the subjects in which they have success. This flexibility may also reflect in the engagement of the students in the subjects with students enrolling in more subjects than they are able to attend. The analysis of the features used in Moodle (Figure 9) showed that Folder, Forum, Page, Quiz, and URL represented around 90% of the students' environment interactions. From these, most were interactions with folders and quizzes. Although they are all asynchronous tools, they can be separated into two categories: interactive and non-interactive.