Science Teachers Use of a Learning Analytics Dashboard to Design Responsive Instruction

• In Event: Supporting Science Teaching and Learning With Technological Approaches

Abstract

By displaying student reasoning, learning-analytics informed teacher dashboards help teachers affirm and respond to student ideas in science classes. This study describes a Teacher Action Planner (TAP) that uses natural language processing to assess students’ integrated understanding and displays patterns of student learning in real-time. We analyze how seven teachers from four schools used the TAP dashboard. Five teachers connected student understanding identified in the TAP to instructional activities that elicited students’ ideas. Four teachers designed instructional responses based on the information in the TAP that led to improved learning outcomes. We discuss implications for dashboard designs that support teachers to respect, affirm, and build on each student’s science thinking

Authors

• Libby F. Gerard, University of California - Berkeley

• Kelly R Billings, University of California - Berkeley

• Marcia Linn, University of California - Berkeley