Co-Developing an Easy-to-Use Learning Analytics Dashboard for Teachers in Primary/Secondary Education: A Human-Centered Design Approach

Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs) can help provide insights and inform pedagogical decisions by supporting the analysis of large amounts of educational data, obtained from sources such as Digital Learning Materials (DLMs). Extracting requirements is a crucial step in developing a LAD, as it helps...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zeynab (Artemis) Mohseni, Italo Masiello, Rafael M. Martins
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-11-01
Series:Education Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/12/1190
Description
Summary:Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs) can help provide insights and inform pedagogical decisions by supporting the analysis of large amounts of educational data, obtained from sources such as Digital Learning Materials (DLMs). Extracting requirements is a crucial step in developing a LAD, as it helps identify the underlying design problem that needs to be addressed. In fact, determining the problem that requires a solution is one of the primary objectives of requirements extraction. Although there have been studies on the development of LADs for K12 education, these studies have not specifically emphasized the use of a Human-Centered Design (HCD) approach to better comprehend the teachers’ requirements and produce more stimulating insights. In this paper we apply prototyping, which is widely acknowledged as a successful way for rapidly implementing cost-effective designs and efficiently gathering stakeholder feedback, to elicit such requirements. We present a three-step HCD approach, involving a design cycle that employs paper and interactive prototypes to guide the systematic and effective design of LADs that truly meet teacher requirements in primary/secondary education, actively engaging them in the design process. We then conducted interviews and usability testing to co-design and develop a LAD that can be used in classroom’s everyday learning activities. Our results show that the visualizations of the interactive prototype were easily interpreted by the participants, verifying our initial goal of co-developing an easy-to-use LAD.
ISSN:2227-7102