A Partnership-Based Approach to Operationalizing Learning Behaviours Using Event Data

Abstract

This paper describes a partnership-based approach for analyzing data from a learning management system (LMS) used by students in grades 6–12. The goal of the partnership was to create indicators for the ways in which students navigated digital learning activities, referred to as playlists, that were comprised of resources, pre-assessments, and summative assessments. To develop various indicators, the collaboration gathered school practitioners’ perspectives on desirable and undesirable student actions within and across playlists, jointly explored and made sense of LMS data, and examined the relationships between behavioural indicators and outcomes that were important to practitioners. The approach described in this paper is intended to provide an example for future researcher–practitioner collaborations to build upon when seeking to jointly analyze data from digital learning environments. The widespread use of playlists and LMSs in K–12 schools throughout the United States means that the collaborative process described in this paper may have broad applicability to large numbers of digital environments, schools, and collaborations.