Online Information Conference

Day 1 - Tuesday 2 December

TRACK 2: BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO SEARCH

Search Engine Optimisation and Search Analytics - targeting value

COURSE ANALYTICS - USING GOOGLE ANALYTICS TO UNDERSTAND STUDENT BEHAVIOUR IN AN ONLINE OPEN UNIVERSITY COURSE

Academic Analytics "describes how data from sources such as a course management system (CMS) or a student information systems (SIS) can identify at-risk students through analytics and predictive modeling". Academic Analytics can be used to predict student success, as well as retention, and are the likely focus of the VLE activity statistics modules.  In contrast to individual student tracking using academic analytics approaches, course analytics describes an approach whereby an off the shelf web stats analytics tool such as Google Analytics is used to better understand aggregated student behaviour in an online course. By treating the online course materials as 'just another website', powerful reporting techniques developed for use in commercial websites can be used to analyse the effectiveness of the website, as a website, in terms of measuring student progress through, and engagement with, the online materials.  Using several presentations of Open University online Relevant Knowledge short courses as an example, I will show what sorts of reporting are possible using Google Analytics, describe how OU students appear to be using our online course materials and discuss how course analytics can be used to inform the design and revision of online elearning courses.

Speaker

• Tony Hirst, Lecturer in ICT, The Open University, UK