SoTL Summer Series: Learning Analytics and SoTL (Part III)

Facilitators: Cora McCloy, Faculty Liaison Coordinator, SoTL, CTSI 

Presenters: 
Alan da Silveira Fleck, Data Analyst, Learning Analytics, Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education
Tingting Zhu, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, GIS Program Director, Geography, Geomatics and Environment, UTM
Naomi Levy-Strumpf, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Human Biology Program 

This session addresses an emergent area that utilizes learning analytics as one source of data for a scholarship of teaching and learning study. Alan da Silveira Fleck and Tingting Zhu will share highlights from their recently published article that focuses on online asynchronous discussion (OAD) and using Quercus log files and student quiz scores to assess the effectiveness of that engagement approach. Naomi Levy-Strumpf will share findings from her project as a participant in the Data Driven Design – Quercus Analytics (D3:QA) cohort where she focused on New Analytics Course Activity Report on the course’s Quercus page to gather information on the number of views and timing of access to course lecture notes and the study guide. A key finding is that accessing the course study guide may be a key resource related to higher quiz scores. Students who accessed this resource in advance had a better performance compared to those who accessed the material closer to the deadline. Naomi also used Quercus Analytics to identify gaps and intervene strategically to promote mastery of concepts and impact student success within the time frame of a single semester. 

This session is open to instructors of all scholarship of teaching and learning experience levels and any instructor or staff with an interest in gaining more information about learning analytics. 

This event is Part III of the CTSI SoTL Summer Series that showcases our U of T instructors’ participation in SoTL conferences, the 2023-24 CTSI SoTL Writing Cohort, in SoTL and Learning Analytics initiatives and in some cases recent publications flowing from these activities. The presentation topics are diverse and fall within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and Discipline-Based Educational Research (DBER) in higher education. All presentations address presenters’ efforts to understand ways to enhance student learning and employ theoretical frameworks and systemic inquiry to meet these goals. Presenters will share their research goals/questions, research design, methods and core findings. There will be time set aside for a Q&A. Participants are welcome from all SoTL experience levels.