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Learning analytics in synchronous online education: Making video conferencing more data-driven and interactivity-focused

Vaibhav Vashisht, Prashant Gautam

Abstract

COVID-19 has been a turning point for online learning across the world, but the remarkable story has been the meteoric growth of synchronous or "live" online education. As instructors around the world have turned to video conferencing platforms to teach, a lot of instructor feedback has recently emerged on a variety of topics. One of the key emerging issues for instructors and institutions has been extracting and consolidating data on student engagement and learning outcomes.

This paper attempts to identify and classify the types of learning data required to understand student learning behavior in synchronous (or "live") online classes based on a multitude of factors such as immediacy, consolidation, and availability to different stakeholders at different points in time. Further, an attempt is made to assess how popular video conferencing platforms address the issues of data generation, presentation, and collation.

Lastly, the paper also proposes an alternative approach that can potentially help create data in an easier, more efficient manner.

Keywords: videoconferencing, online learning, learning analytics, students' data, synchronous education

References

AUTHORS

Vaibhav Vashisht

The author is a co-founder at Acadly. Prior to co-founding Acadly in 2015, he worked with Tata Administrative Services across diverse industry verticals in various functions including finance and corporate strategy. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) and a graduate degree in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta).

Prashant Gautam

The author is a co-founder at Acadly. Prior to co-founding Acadly in 2015, he worked as a technical and product lead at various startups. He has conceptualized and built from the ground up products including games, a movie recommendation engine, an adaptive learning platform, and an online learning platform, to name a few. He holds a Master's degree in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur).

About the article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15219/em86.1482

The article is in the printed version on pages 54-61.

pdf read the article (English)

How to cite

Vashisht, V., & Gautam, P. (2020). Learning analytics in synchronous online education: Making video conferencing more data-driven and interactivity-focused. e-mentor, 4(86), 54-61. https://doi.org/10.15219/em86.1482