Learning Analytics and VR

Learning Analytics in Virtual Reality Content Creation

This project aims to investigate how learning analytics can be leveraged for enhancing  students’ virtual reality content creation. Grounded on the constructionist paradigm of maker education, virtual reality (VR) content creation has potential in developing both content knowledge and 21st century skills.

Learning analytics (LA) optimizes teaching and learning through generating and visualizing fine-grained, moment-by-moment metrics and personalized recommendations. Our study on student needs analysis revealed that students demand personalized feedback for performing self-regulated learning and improving the quality of their learning products.

Integrating LA with VR content creation tools can be promising in improving learning outcomes and helping analyze the making-learning processes. Based on a pilot study on students’ needs and preliminary evaluation of a low-fidelity prototype, we developed an initial prototype of an LA enabled VR content creation platform (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. VR story editor’s interface on the prototype

Furthermore, we have designed a preliminary learning analytics dashboard for students’ quick reference during their making process. This dashboard includes a personal checklist of VR content creation tasks (left of Fig. 2), a page with students’ own and peers’ progress statistics (right of Fig. 2), and also a text analytic function for detecting students’ use of metadiscourse features in their VR narration scripts (Fig. 3)

Figure 2. Preliminary LA dashboard on LAVR, with Checklist (left) and Progress Statistics (right)

Figure 3. Text analytic function, with highlighted metadiscourse features

As a pilot study, the platform prototype will be tried out in a university-wide general education course on digitizing cultural heritage, for facilitating its maker activities of creating VR content of cultural heritage sites. Our future work will include:

  1. the effectiveness of this prototype in improving learning processes and outcomes of VR content creation;
  2. its usability from students’ and teachers’ perspectives; and
  3. exploration of students’ self-regulated learning in the creation process.

Given the increasing adoption of VR technologies across educational contexts, this project has the potential to benefit K-12 students in both formal and informal settings, such as museums and libraries in the future. Please contact us if you would like to know more and/or collaborate with us.

Publications

Wang, Z., Ng, J. T. D., Liu, R. & Hu, X. (accepted, Apr 2022). Learning Analytics Enabled Virtual Reality Content Creation Platform: System Design and Preliminary Evaluation. The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2022).

Ng, J. T. D., Wang, Z., & Hu, X. (2022). Needs Analysis and Prototype Evaluation of Student-facing Tzi-Dong Ng, J., Wang, Z., & Hu, X. (2022). Needs Analysis and Prototype Evaluation of Student-facing LA Dashboard for Virtual Reality Content Creation. In LAK22: 12th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (pp. 444-450). https://doi.org/10.1145/3506860.3506880

Hu, X., Ng, J., & Lee, J. H. (2019). VR creation experience in cultural heritage education: A preliminary exploration. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 56(1), 422-426. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.42