The final activity for each learning lab provides space to work with data and to reflect on how the concepts and techniques introduced in each lab might apply to your own research.
To earn a badge for each lab, you are required to respond to a set of prompts for two parts:
In Part I, you will reflect on your understanding of key concepts and begin to think about potential next steps for your own study.
In Part II, you will create a simple data product in R that demonstrates your ability to apply a data analysis technique introduced in this learning lab.
Part I: Reflect and Plan
Use the institutional library (e.g. NCSU Library), Google Scholar or search engine to locate a research article, presentation, or resource that applies learning analytics analysis to an educational context or topic of interest. More specifically, locate a study that makes use of one of the data structures we learned today. You are also welcome to select one of your research papers.
Provide an APA citation for your selected study.
Akçapınar, G., Altun, A., & Aşkar, P. (2019). Using learning analytics to develop early-warning system for at-risk students. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 16(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0172-z
What types of data are associated with LA ?
sessions, navigating the resources, posts and discussions in a blended environment
What type of data structures are analyzed in the educational context?
The relationships and predictive nature of facets of each of the four categories.
How might this article be used to better understand a dataset or educational context of personal or professional interest to you?
Using the type of data and how it was structured, may be a model for looking at a predicting adherence/remaining in an after school tutoring program, look at how students engage
Finally, how do these processes compare with what teachers and educational organizations already do to support and assess student learning?
The data are items that most if not all teachers have access to, especially in a blended or online class. How it was used predictively could be used, and may be being used by some teachers. Each facet of the data is most likely being used independently as measures of “grades”.
Draft a research question of guided by techniques and data sources that you are potentially interested in exploring in more depth.
How do students in an afterschool cohort interact?
What connections emerge from interactions?
What data source(s) should be analyzed or discussed?
Where students sit, how often they attend, who they work with, interact with, post off site with…?
I would like to use social network/sociogram to visualize the data.
What is the purpose of your article?
To see what students do with information and how they work together or not and with whom.
Explain the analytical level at which these data would need to be collected and analyzed.
Program level data would need to be collected and analayzed and visualized. The data would need to be wrangled and cleaned. It would be direct behaviors and descriptors.
How, if at all, will your article touch upon the application(s) of LA to “understand and improve learning and the contexts in which learning occurs?”
Using LA methodologies and practices could help learn more/understand informal interactions in a cohort group to inform instruction and maximize assets.
Part II: Data Product
In our Learning Analytics code-along, we scratched the surface on the number of ways that we can wrangle the data.
Using one of the data sets provided in the data folder, your goal for this lab is to extend the Learning Analytics Workflow from our code-along by preparing and wrangling different data.
Or alternatively, you may use your own data set to use in the workflow. If you do decide to use your own data set you must include:
Show two different ways using select function with your data, inspect and save as a new object.
Show one way to use filter function with your data, inspect and save as a new object.
Show one way using arrange function with your data, inspect and save as a new object.
Use the pipe operator to bring it all together.
Feel free to create a new script in your lab 2 to work through the following problems. Then when satisfied add the code in the code chunks below. Don’t forget to run the code to make sure it works.
Instructions:
Add your name to the document in author.
Set up the first (or, two if using an Introduction) phases of the LA workflow below. I’ve added the wrangle section for you. You will need to Prepare the libraries necessary to wrangle the data.
In the chunk called read-data: Import the sci-online-classes.csv from the data folder and save as a new object called sci_classes. Then inspect your data using a function of your choice.
# Type your code here#load todyverselibrary(tidyverse)
── Attaching core tidyverse packages ──────────────────────── tidyverse 2.0.0 ──
✔ dplyr 1.1.4 ✔ readr 2.1.5
✔ forcats 1.0.0 ✔ stringr 1.5.1
✔ ggplot2 3.5.2 ✔ tibble 3.3.0
✔ lubridate 1.9.4 ✔ tidyr 1.3.1
✔ purrr 1.0.4
── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
✖ dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
✖ dplyr::lag() masks stats::lag()
ℹ Use the conflicted package (<http://conflicted.r-lib.org/>) to force all conflicts to become errors
Rows: 603 Columns: 30
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (6): course_id, subject, semester, section, Gradebook_Item, Gender
dbl (23): student_id, total_points_possible, total_points_earned, percentage...
lgl (1): Grade_Category
ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.
In the select-1 code chunk: Use the ‘select’ function to selectstudent_id, subject, semester, FinalGradeCEMS. Assign to a new object with a different name (you choose the name).
# Type your code heresci_classes_1 <-select(sci_classes, student_id, subject, semester, FinalGradeCEMS)#inspect your datasci_classes_1
What do you notice about FinalGradeCEMS? (*Hint: NAs?)
Answer here {possible answer: I notice NA values indicating missing data. This requires handling either by imputation or removal depending on the analysis requirements.}
NA has no data. It will have to be dealt with or explained, wrangled? cleaned?
In code chunk named select-2select all columns except subject and section. Assign to a new object with a different name. Inspect your data frame with a different function.
# Type your code heresci_classes_2 <-select(sci_classes, student_id, course_id, total_points_possible, total_points_earned, percentage_earned, semester, Gradebook_Item, Points_Possible, Points_Earned,Gender, TimeSpent, TimeSpent_hours, FinalGradeCEMS)#inspect dataglimpse(sci_classes_2)
In the code chunk named filter-1, Filter the sci_classes data frame for students in OcnA courses. Assign to a new object with a different name. Use the head() function to examine your data frame.
#Type your code hereStudents_OcnA <-filter(sci_classes, subject =="OcnA")#inspect your datahead(Students_OcnA)
Q: How many rows does the head() function display? Hint: Check the dimensions of your tibble in the console.
There are 6 rows.
{Possible answerr: The head function displays 5 rows of data}
In code chunk named filter-2, filter the sci_classes data frame so rows with NA for points earned are removed. Assign to a new object with a different name. Use glimpse() to examine all columns of your data frame.
# Type your filter_2 <- sci_classes %>%drop_na(total_points_earned)#inspect data view(filter_2)
In the code chunk called arrange-1, Arrangesci_classes data by subject then percentage_earned in descending order. Assign to a new object. Use the str() function to examine the data type of each column in your data frame.
# Type your code herearrange_descend <-sci_classes %>%arrange(subject, desc(percentage_earned))filter(sci_classes, subject =="OcnA")
To receive your the Foundations Badge, you will need to render this document and publish via a method designated by your instructor such as: Quarto Pub, Posit Cloud, RPubs , GitHub Pages, or other methods. Once you have shared a link to you published document with your instructor and they have reviewed your work, you will be provided a physical or digital version of the badge pictured at the top of this document!
If you have any questions about this badge, or run into any technical issues, don’t hesitate to contact your instructor. Once your instructor has checked your link, you will be provided a physical version of the badge!
Complete the following steps to submit your work for review:
First, change the name of the author: in the YAML header at the very top of this document to your name. The YAML header controls the style and feel for knitted document but doesn’t actually display in the final output.
Next, click the knit button in the toolbar above to “knit” your R Markdown document to a HTML file that will be saved in your R Project folder. You should see a formatted webpage appear in your Viewer tab in the lower right pan or in a new browser window. Let’s us know if you run into any issues with knitting.
