(SpringerBriefs in Business Process Management) Learning Analytics Cookbook_ How to Support Learning Processes Through Data Analytics and Visualizatio

Chapter 7
Understanding Students’ Online Behavior
While They Search on the Internet:
Searching as Learning
Abstract Informal learning activities, like searching for information on the Internet,
can enhance students’ learning. However, not everything we find on the Internet is
factual. If teachers could understand where the students look for information during
their course, they could help them improve the quality of their informal learning
through the Internet. This recipe shows how to gain insights into students’ online
searching behavior and to monitor their performance by using a collaborative
learning environment which tracks students’ activities. This recipe is supported by
a system that integrates a collaboration environment, a glossary tool, and an online
tracking system, specifically created to meet the needs of teachers who teach
translation and interpretation courses. Using this system, the teacher can take
advantage of the dashboard visualizations to monitor students’ activities and identify
cases of low commitment or misunderstanding of the task so they can provide
individual support to the students who need it.
Keywords LearnWeb · Learning platform · Log data analysis
7.1 Appetizer
In a modern learning scenario, informal learning activities like searching for materials
on the Internet are increasing. If a teacher can track how students carry out their
searches, the teacher can help them improve the quality of their search results.
However, few tools are available that allow teachers to track their students’ online
search behavior efficiently. Such tracking would be particularly helpful in terminology
work, as it involves searching the web for comparable texts and selecting those
that provide useful translation equivalents.
Many studies have already used log data to analyze learning activities (Mazza and
Dimitrova 2004; Mazza et al. 2012; Zhang and Almeroth 2010). Most of these
studies use only the built-in logging facilities of tools like Moodle and WebCT, but
many language-learning tasks require students to search for information on websites
other than the tools used in the course, and these external actions cannot be logged
by course management systems like Moodle. Other studies have used screen-
© The Author(s) 2020
R. Jaakonmäki et al., Learning Analytics Cookbook, SpringerBriefs in Business
Process Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43377-2_7
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