Visualization of data in a learning and self-reflection context

by Jose Luis Santos Sten Govaerts & Erik Duval

Thank you and good afternoon. The idea is that I would like to present our experiment that we are doing, that we are trying to use Quantified Self tools in the classroom in the Catholic University in Lube that is far away from here.

And what are we doing or for whom it is intended for. It is a group of students, second year bachelor student and they have few put out a project in class, and the idea is that they have to self-manage their time, and self-manage also their group time because they are working in groups. Also they have to face some problems that they have, because they are using new technologies for them.

So the idea is what are we doing for that. All we are doing is using trackers in the rescue time and plug-ins for an environment problem. And the idea is that we visualize the behaviour of the groups. At the end they have to be aware of their own activity and also ought to reflect on the visualization.

For that we have developed this learning dashboard, and the idea is that they basically they can see eight widgets in iGoogle, and on the right side they can see their own activity compared with the total activity of the group.

But basically for the experiment we have learnt somethings, and the idea is basically that we can learn several things, for instance the students increase their performance with their experiments. Basically rescue time only tracks the time that you are doing something with the tool. So we see with the time they get more practice, and at the end they got a bit more productive because they already know how to use these tools and they have learnt a bit of the technologies, so it’s a bit easier for them.

And also the idea is that you can detect patterns that they occur at, but also we can detect something that is going wrong, because we have the correct tendencies, and we can compare the others and they also can compare between them.

Some the idea is finally that for instance, in the case of that we have this visualization. So for instance also we can detect how the others can detect that someone is worried about the weather and his social life. Because we can see the total activities that it’s in red, it’s basically from this guide, so it’s clear that in this case he is performing wrong, because he’s not worried on how to solve the problem that he has during the project. But also, we can say that the tendency of all the students basically as that they usually browse in a productive way. Because for instance in that case basically at the end this is the website of their group, so they basically visit the course another document website.

From the service we have learned that basically want they like of the tool is what the others like, it’s that they can control all their colleagues, but all say basically that they don’t like to be controlled and they don’t like the other people can see what they are doing.

But as we come to the final and important question is is really useful, and basically the answer is what I didn’t think we would expect that and basically the students said yes, but at the end they don’t use it.

It’s a bit frustrating but it’s the students, I mean and we would like to bring a question to you and maybe you can have some insights for us. Because our question is that we don’t know reflection it’s only an implicit process and may be the students doesn’t care about what they are really doing. Maybe they only care about getting the diploma and getting the results, and they don’t want to do anything else. So if you don’t force it it’s a bit difficult. And I think a big part of this is that they have by themselves take the initiative to do their reflection process.

So thank you very much.