TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards the implementation of a countrywide K-12 learning analytics initiative in Uruguay
AU - Macarini, Luiz Antonio
AU - Lemos dos Santos, Henrique
AU - Cechinel, Cristian
AU - Ochoa, Xavier
AU - Rodés, Virgínia
AU - Pérez Casas, Alén
AU - Lucas, Pedro Pablo
AU - Maya, Ricardo
AU - Alonso, Guillermo Ettlin
AU - Díaz, Patricia
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación [grant number FSED_2_2016_1_130897].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2020/2/17
Y1 - 2020/2/17
N2 - The present work describes the challenges faced during the development of a countrywide Learning Analytics study and tool focused on tracking and understanding the trajectories of Uruguayan students during their first three years of secondary education. Due to the large scale of the project, which covers an entire national educational system, several challenges and constraints were faced during its conception and development. Examples of key challenges were: to understand the different nuances of the educational system, to satisfy ethical and legal requirements without narrowing down the scope and potential novelty of the initiative and to deal with integration and inconsistencies in the databases. This paper presents the design decisions and solutions found to address or mitigate the problems found as a contribution to facilitate similar large-scale projects. Three main experiments using data mining were conducted and their results are also described, pointing out the feasibility of finding meaningful patterns that can be used by educational authorities to improve their decision making and foster public educational policies. Finally, the paper describes the use of the data and the findings of the study to create an interactive visual tool to explore the relationship between student variables, performance and persistence in the system.
AB - The present work describes the challenges faced during the development of a countrywide Learning Analytics study and tool focused on tracking and understanding the trajectories of Uruguayan students during their first three years of secondary education. Due to the large scale of the project, which covers an entire national educational system, several challenges and constraints were faced during its conception and development. Examples of key challenges were: to understand the different nuances of the educational system, to satisfy ethical and legal requirements without narrowing down the scope and potential novelty of the initiative and to deal with integration and inconsistencies in the databases. This paper presents the design decisions and solutions found to address or mitigate the problems found as a contribution to facilitate similar large-scale projects. Three main experiments using data mining were conducted and their results are also described, pointing out the feasibility of finding meaningful patterns that can be used by educational authorities to improve their decision making and foster public educational policies. Finally, the paper describes the use of the data and the findings of the study to create an interactive visual tool to explore the relationship between student variables, performance and persistence in the system.
KW - Academic trajectory
KW - dashboard
KW - educational data mining
KW - learning analytics
KW - secondary education
KW - visualization
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U2 - 10.1080/10494820.2019.1636082
DO - 10.1080/10494820.2019.1636082
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068677488
SN - 1049-4820
VL - 28
SP - 166
EP - 190
JO - Interactive Learning Environments
JF - Interactive Learning Environments
IS - 2
ER -