Presentation given by Mark Drechsler, Senior Director of Client Services, and the 2013 NZ Moodlemoot.

1. Moodle & Analytics – a matter of
perspective
Mark Drechsler

2. What do we mean by ‘analytics’?
How can we classify different kinds of analytics?
What are the challenges we face in the LMS?
What is happening in the Moodle project (and
beyond) in relation to analytics?
This session

3. “…exploring the unique types of data that come from
educational settings, and using those methods to better
understand students.”
A broad definition
Source: Wikipedia entry on Educational Data Mining

4. However – many different
perspectives

6. Type Level/object Who benefits?
Learning
Analytics
Course level Learners, Academics
Faculty level Learners, Academics
Academic
Analytics
Institutional Administrators, Funders,
Marketing
Regional Funders, Administrators
National and
international
National governments,
Educational authorities
Multiple perspectives
Source: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/penetrating-fog-analytics-learning-and-education
Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education – Phillip Long & George Siemens

7. Type Level/object Who benefits?
Learning
Analytics
Course level Learners, Academics
Faculty level Learners, Academics
Academic
Analytics
Institutional Administrators, Funders,
Marketing
Regional Funders, Administrators
National and
international
National governments,
Educational authorities
Multiple perspectives
Target Consumer
Source: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/penetrating-fog-analytics-learning-and-education
Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education – Phillip Long & George Siemens

8. Target
Students?
Subjects?
Faculties?
Universities?
Two dimensional model

9. Consumer
Students?
Teachers?
Decision makers?
Two dimensional model

10. Target
Consumer
Scope
Automation
Slightly modified model

11. One extreme: LMS only data analysis
Simple to implement
Losing ‘market share’ of data over time leading to lower
reliability of analysis
Other extreme: Learning ecosystem
Complex – needs open standards model and external
repository
The holy grail of educational analytics?
Analytics Scope

13. One extreme: Manual analysis
Run reports, analyse data, take actions
Other extreme: Automated analysis
Automated analysis against known metrics
Alerts & notifications to consumers
Analytics automation

14. Goal:
Finding out you have a problem
Before you have a problem.

15. This gives us a framework for
considering perspectives on
analytics

16. Couple of examples

17. 1. Engagement Analytics
http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Engagement_Analytics_Plugin

18. 2. Custom reporting
http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Configurable_reports

19. Where to from here?

20. Only one part of the story
Lecture capture? Library systems?
Virtual classroom? Social learning?
Logs in Moodle are good, but not
comprehensive
‘LMS only’ analysis problems

21. Data gets big(gish)
‘Typical’ Moodle uni generates
between 50,000,000 and
100,000,000 log records in a year
LMS only analysis problems

22. Moodle analytics roadmap:
‘Foundation building’

23. Solution part 1: abstraction
Log
store
Adapted from http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Logging_2
Log data

24. What they are saying:
SOLAR: “Development of a common language for
data exchange*” – first item on their roadmap
IMS: “The … ‘holy grail’ of data interoperability
is an agreed upon “learning/progress map” that
all tools and assessments could populate.**”
Solution part 2 - standards
* source: http://solaresearch.org/OpenLearningAnalytics.pdf
** source: http://www.imsglobal.org/blog/?p=258

25. Increase amount of data gathered in Moodle’s logs to
support more in-depth analytics.
Solution part 3 – more data!

26. Analytics roadmap:
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Road
map
(Look for Logging 2)

27. Once ‘foundation’ is
stronger, more plugins can be
built more easily for more
purposes
And then…

28. Plug-in analytics
Log
store
Adapted from http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Logging_2
Log data
In-LMS analytics
Externalanalytics

29. Earlier effort:
Monash Uni/NetSpot project
implementing ‘engagement
analytics’ plugin in 2012:
http://bit.ly/MoodleAnalytics

30. This year’s project:
Macquarie Uni, UNSW and
NetSpot initiating a project to
develop student centric analytics
in Moodle

31. Thanks!
www.netspot.com.au