A qualitative evaluation of evolution of a learning analytics tool
LOCO-Analyst is a learning analytics tool we developed to provide educators with feedback on students learning activities and performance. Evaluation of the first version of the tool led to the enhancement of the tool's data visualization, user interface, and supported feedback types. The second evaluation of the improved tool allowed us to see how the improvements affected the users' perceived value of the tool. Here, we present the qualitative results of our two evaluations and discuss important lessons learned stemming from the comparison of the two studies. The results show that educators find the kinds of feedback implemented in the tool informative and they value the mix of textual and graphical representations of different kinds of feedback provided by the tool. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
qualitative evaluation learning analytics visualization semantic web content analysis