Using learning analytics in a next generation digital learning environment to transition from face-to-face to remote learning during the Coronavirus crisis

This paper focuses on the use of Learning Analytics in a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE) and describes a working pan-European NGDLE created in the recent Up2University (Up2U) Horizon 2020 project to help high school students transition to university. In this study, the Up2U NGDLE was adapted for use in an intensive postgraduate course which shifted online in response to the emergency situation resulting from the general lockdown in Italy in March 2020.The central purpose of our presentation is to show how using Learning Analytics in the Up2U NGDLE helped the professor who taught this course to adapt his teaching to this sudden shift to an online learning environment. A sample of 25 students attending their first year of a 2-year long MA course participated in this online course which was based on 5 lessons in 2 weeks. Each lesson was based on two parts - first part was based on a webinar-style traditional approach followed by a second 2-hour part based on a PBL approach, using a Moodle-based environment as the main virtual support. In the second part of each lesson, students switched to another platform (CommonSpaces) hosted in the same NGDLE to perform their PBL activities. This approach allowed both the professor and his students to exploit one important aspect of the NGDLE principle: the Learning Analytics system as a common base for each tool hosted in the environment. In our paper, we will show how the Up2U platform gives teachers the opportunity to test and track students’ use of Moodle-based tools as well as CommonSpaces via Learning Locker, a system capable of collecting data from xApi-abled tools as well as from a more traditional data provider like Matomo (Abbey, 2016).