Building a Learning Experience: What Do Learners’ Online Interaction Data Imply?

Abstract

It is still under debate whether learners’ interaction data within e-learning and/or open learning environments could be considered as reflections of their learning experiences to be effective or not. Therefore, it is meaningful to explore the nature of these interactions and to make meaningful conclusions. The purpose of this study is to model learners’ learning experiences based on their interaction data in an LMS. The study was designed to understand the nature of interactions and to observe whether interaction types display an observable meaningful pattern. For this purpose, a course titled Computer Networks and Communication was designed and taught in a learning management system, where learners could receive real-time responses and monitor their process through dashboards as recommendations for their learning process. Thirty-one metrics were gathered from database records, which yielded a common factor with six subfactors, where the highest correlation was between learners-learning dashboards interactions and learners-learning objects. In addition, this factorial structure could be considered a holistic view of a learning experience based on the interaction data within a learning management system. Another finding of this study indicated that learners’ interaction with learning dashboards had been a meaningful dimension of their overall learning experiences. The results of this study present instructional design cues and pedagogical outcomes.