Observing the use of e-textbooks in the classroom: Towards “offline” learning analytics

Abstract

Learning analytics is an emerging approach that is equally popular among researchers and educators-practitioners. Although the methods and tools for LA have been developing fast, there still exist several unsolved problems: LA is too much data driven, weakly connected to theory and is able to analyse only the activities documented in an online setting - in LMS. We propose a solution for the LA unit of analysis drawing upon the research of existing practices and tools used for offline contexts: the data is coming from the physical learning interactions based on the observations in the classroom setting and captured with classroom observation application. We argue that if the unit of analysis has a particular logic and structure, it can unleash the possibilities for “offline” analytics that can be later integrated with online LA.