MPIA in Action: Example Learning Analytics

Abstract

This chapter turned to the third root of this work, i.e., its application for learning analytics. It briefly reviewed the state of the art for the subareas in focus—content analysis and social network analysis. Related work can be found, however, typi- cally dealing with either of the two aspects, not their interplay. The chapter picked up the recurring, guiding foundational example introduced originally to illustrate the working principles (and shortcomings) of social network analysis and then—again—to do the same for latent semantic analysis. It showed with the help of this example, how an integrated solution can shed light on competence development in a more holistic way and while assisting in its imple- mentation with improved functionality for analysis (compared to the functionality provided by any of the two methods stand-alone). Two application examples with real-life data rounded up the application demos. The first one tended again to essay scoring (as already introduced in Sect. 4.5), but this time demonstrated the additional analysis possibilities (and insights) provided by MPIA. In particular, this example illustrated, how positional information can be utilised to better understand the relation of essays to each other and to their model solutions. Moreover, the second real-life case revealed additional facilities pro- vided by MPIA for analysis of learning paths. It did so by inspecting a larger corpus of academic writings spread out over several subject areas, study years, and institutions.