Developing Your Inquiry
Implementing learning analytics data to guide instructional decision-making is a complex process. According to Wise & Jung (2019), instructors often approach the use of dashboards without particular and predefined questions, but instead with a broad sense of curiosity regarding specific areas of their teaching and students’ learning. Furthermore, questions may naturally arise and evolve as you engage with the analytics tools.
In the context of translating analytical information into practical insights for teaching, several key aspects come into play. These include:
- Formulating Meaningful Questions: To extract valuable insights, it’s crucial to consider relevant and insightful questions.
- Identifying Analytical Elements: Recognize the specific components within the analytical tools that can provide the necessary information.
- Planning Responsive Actions: Create a plan for how to act upon the insights derived from the data.
To help you in this process, you may choose to utilize an inquiry planner tool (such as the one provided below). This planner assists in the process of developing inquiry questions, identifying the dashboard elements that provide meaningful analytical data, and outlining the actions needed to implement the insights effectively.
Starting Point for Exploration
Use the prompts below to organize your ideas about possible inquiry questions (and possible data sources) you would like to explore. Consider:
- What is your topic? What have you noticed in your teaching? (independent learning, online teaching…)
- What is the context of your research? (course, lab, subject area, university…)
- What do you want to achieve? (describe, discover, change…)
- What is the nature of your question? (what, who, how, why…)
- Are there any potential relationships you want to explore? (impacts, decreases…)
- What other aspects aren’t being considered?
Below is an example planner that showcases an inquiry question, the data source to be considered and the action plan to take place upon results of inquiry. You may download your own, blank, planner tool.
Possible Inquiry Questions
How many students first viewed a key resource on the day before an important quiz deadline? (i.e., identifying cramming of the material)
Possible Dashboard Elements
Visualizations in “First access and review of course elements.”
Action Plan for Fall Term:
Monitor access to key resource(s) after each of the weekly quizzes. Identify and connect cramming behaviours to quiz performance improvements or regressions.
In and Out of Scope
Before drafting your inquiry plan, first consider the elements that are in and out of the scope of the current version of the Quercus Data Insights. These items are detailed in the table below.
In Scope
Out of Scope
- Aggregate student activity (views, participation, and downloads in course elements) occurring inside Quercus.
- Ability to filter by individual course elements.
- Course-level data
- Section-level data
- Student activity grouped by day, week or month.
- Up to 24 months of activity data allowing instructors to compare the same course across multiple terms.
- Individual student activity
- Grades
- Activity happening outside Quercus (e.g., Piazza, YouTube)
- Personal and demographic student data (e.g., age, gender, country of citizenship, etc.)
- Administrative information from ROSI (e.g., program of study, year of study, GPA, etc).
You can locate additional analytics resources by visiting the “Deeper into Data and SoTL” page, including guides on how to download activity reports from Quercus, access Quercus New Analytics, apply for REB (Research Ethics Board) approval, and participate in CTSI (Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation) program activities.