Resource Access Patterns in Exam Preparation Activities
In this paper we investigate patterns of resource usage for exam preparation based on a resource intensive blended learning course. To this end, we analyzed a blended learning, online course facilitated by Moodle. During the course, the students had to wo
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Abstract. In this paper we investigate patterns of resource usage for exam preparation based on a resource intensive blended learning course. To this end, we analyzed a blended learning, online course facilitated by Moodle. During the course, the students had to work individually and in teams. Furthermore, they were given access to a broad spectrum of learning resources such as videos, slides, wiki articles and quizzes. The logfiles obtained from Moodle were further processed and analyzed. Our analysis approach is based on association rule as well as sequential pattern mining. The results indicate that students’ activity with respect to resource usage follows common patterns during exam preparation either on the individual or the group level. These patterns also relate to the performance of students and to reflect their prior collaborative experience. Keywords: Small private online courses · Moodle · Exam preparation · Sequential pattern mining · Association rule mining
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Introduction
There are numerous examples of enhancing traditional learning scenarios with online and interactive elements, usually subsumed under the notion of “blended learning”. Armando Fox [5] argues for complementing traditional university courses with concepts and materials from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to “increase instructor leverage, student throughput, student mastery, and student engagement”. He calls this concept “Small Private Online Course” (SPOCs). To investigate the effectiveness of complementing traditional university courses with SPOCs, in 2013 we redesigned an existing Master level lecture on user/task modeling and models of interactive and collaborative learning environments [13]. The main idea was to shift the focus of the classroom experience from teacher centered lecturing to student centered interactions. To achieve that, the lecture was redefined in the sense of providing orientation knowledge (“advance organizer”) and core definitions with a limited number of characteristic examples. The presence based exercise was “virtualized”, i.e. replaced by a combination of individual and group assignments with reporting c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 G. Conole et al. (Eds.): EC-TEL 2015, LNCS 9307, pp. 497–502, 2015. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24258-3 46
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back into the learning management system (a Moodle 2 plattform). Additionally, the plenary face-to-face setting of the lecture was used as a forum to take up and discuss results from the virtual exercise activities. An important assignment was the collaborative creation of wiki articles. Each group focused on another topic, thus the combination of all wiki articles also provided the course with a collaboratively created script of the lecture for exam preparation. Based on the experiences of the 2013 course, in 2014 we repeated the course with some changes, e.g. regarding group formation and size, and added exercises involving virtual labs for supporting the better understanding of complex, theoretical concepts. This kind of b
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