Learning analytics

Learning Analytics are any piece of information that can help an LMS user improve learning outcomes. Users include students, teachers, administrators and decision-makers.

Moodle Plugins

There are a number of reports, blocks and other plugins for Moodle that provide learning analytics.

Plugin	Plugin type	Standard / Additional	Useful for	Description	Reported usage*
Logs	Report	Standard	Teachers, Admins, Decision-makers	Filterable log of events	71.4%
Activity	Report	Standard	Teachers	View count of activities in course	69.1%
Activity completion, see also Course completion	Report	Standard	Teachers	Completion matrix of students and activities	66.3%
Live logs	Report	Standard	Teachers, Admins	Automatically refreshing log of events	55.2%
Feedback	Activity	Standard	Teachers, Researchers	Configurable survey tool	59.5%
(Quiz) Statistics	Report	Standard	Teachers	Student quiz performance report	53.0%
(Course) Participation	Report	Standard	Teachers	Single student's participation in course	49.9%
Survey	Activity	Standard	Teachers, Researchers	Set of standardised educational surveys	45.6%
Questionnaire	Activity	Additional	Teachers, Researchers	Configurable survey tool	45.3%
Course overview	Report	Standard	Admins, Decision-makers	Comparison of participation across multiple courses	45.0%
Course completion status	Block	Standard	Students	View of student's own completion of activities	41.4%
Progress Bar	Block	Additional	Students, Teachers	Time management tool for students with overview for teachers	32.0%
Events list	Report	Standard	Teachers, Admins	Events that can be monitored/searched in logs	28.6%
Activity results block	Block	Standard	Students	Leader-board of results in single activity	26.1%
Configurable Reports (A list of contributed reports)	Block (Report Graphs filter)	Additional	Teachers, Admins, Decision-makers	Report generation and viewing	22.7%
(Gradebook) Overview	Report	Standard	Teachers, Students	View of student grades across activites	N/A
Statistics	Report	Standard	Admins, Decision-makers	Daily activity across site	N/A
Event monitor	Report	Standard	Teachers, Admins, Decision-makers	Proactive, focussed monitor tool	N/A
Ad-hoc database queries	Report	Additional	Teachers, Admins, Decision-makers	SQL-based report generation and viewing	N/A
Engagement Analytics	Block, Report, Activity module	Additional	Teachers	Configurable engagement measurement report and block	N/A
Course Dedication	Block	Additional	Students, Teachers	Estimated time online for students	N/A
Graph Stats	Block	Additional	Teachers, Admins	Daily visits to site or course	N/A
GISMO	Block	Additional	Teachers	Numerous charts of student activity participation	N/A
Level Up!	Block	Additional	Students, Teachers	Incentive-drive participation meter	N/A
Forum Graph	Report	Additional	Teachers	Graph of forum interactions	N/A
Analytics Graphs	Block	Additional	Teachers	Visualisation of student participation	N/A
Heatmap	Block	Additional	Teachers	Colour-coded indication of activity views on course page	N/A
Analytics	Local	Additional	Admins, Decision-makers	Enriched feed to Google Analytics and Pywick	N/A
Logstore xAPI	Logstore	Additional	Admins, Decision-makers, Researchers	xAPI event stream output	N/A

* Reported usage is drawn from the Plugins Usage Survey from 2015.

Integrations with Moodle

A number of systems integrate with Moodle to provide learning analytics information externally.

• Moodle Activity Viewer (MAV) (Git), consider Heatmap as an alternative
• Intelliboard
• Zoola (was Analytika)
• Learning Locker, can be used with Logstore xAPI
• SmartKlass
• Blackboard Predict
• Completing the loop
• IADlearning offers institutions and educators a rich set of analytics allowing them to understand the quality of their training content, as well as the quality of the ongoing learning processes.

Dimensions of Analytics

Learning analytics are a concept that has been emerging under a number of different names through the past decades. Its origins lie in research in data mining and intelligent tutoring systems. LA tools can be categorised in a number of ways:

• Descriptive
• Predictive
• Diagnostic
• Prescriptive

See also...

• Analytics and reporting forum
• Moodle Research forum
• Moodle research page
• Logging
• Events list
• Learning Analytics API specification
• Assessment Analytics working group details and issues
• Events specification
• Logging specification
• Report Builder API specification
• Use Generico filter to display custom DB reports with graphs Demo / Forums
• Solving the ethical and legal issues around learning analytics: a series of podcasts
• A number of free Moodle analytics plugins you can try available on http://plugins.moodlebites.com

Presentations

• Moodle Analytics Plans I Elizabeth Dalton at MoodleMoot Australia 2016 (video 24m)
• List of Learning Analytics related presentation, from project Inspire

Project Inspire

Project Inspire is an open source, transparent next-generation learning analytics that go beyond simple descriptive analytics to provide predictions of learner success, and ultimately diagnosis and prescriptions (advisements) to learners and teachers. Moodle’s Project Inspire is essentially Moodle’s Analytics Plan. The project aims to identify and validate, indicators of student, teacher and institutional engagement in educational activities. Information from this will be used to develop learning analytics software features, which will have these functions:

• Description of learning engagement and progress,
• Diagnosis of learning engagement and progress,
• Prediction of learning progress, and
• Prescription (recommendations) for improvement of learning progress.

Anonymized "ready for research" Data

• "Learn Moodle August 2016" anonymized data set