Teacher dashboards in practice: Usage and impact

Abstract

Even though the recent influx of tablets in primary education goes together with the vision that educational technologies will revolutionize education, empirical results supporting this claim are scarce. The adaptive educational technology in this research is used daily in primary classrooms and includes teacher dashboards. While students practice on the tablet, the technology displays real-time data of learner progress and performance in teacher dashboards. This study examines how teachers use the dashboards during lessons applying the Verberts’ learning analytic process model. Teacher dashboard consultations and resulting pedagogical actions were observed in mathematics lessons. In a following stimulated recall interview, a teacher was asked to elaborate on the knowledge he/she activated and his/her reasoning in interpreting the dashboard. The results indicate that teachers consult the dashboard on average 8,3 times per lesson, but great variation among teachers was found. Teachers activate existing knowledge about the class and students to interpret dashboard data. The pedagogical actions teachers take after dashboard consultation are mainly providing individual feedback and additional instruction. The results show that pedagogical actions preformed at teachers’ own initiative are mostly directed to low ability students, whereas actions after consulting the dashboard are more directed at middle and high ability students. These results indicate that extracted learning analytics, in the form of teacher dashboards are indeed influencing teachers’ pedagogical actions in daily classroom activities and may initiate behavior changes in teaching practices.