Learning Analytics for Wiki-based Learning Environments in Primary and Secondary Schools

This research initiative aims to help teachers and learners in primary and secondary schools by implementing learning analytics in their Wiki-based learning environments. Wiki is widely regarded as a useful platform to facilitate project-based learning. By integrating learning analytic tools to Wikis, this project assists teachers in processing and making sense of the large amount of continuous student input. This is a pioneering project in processing student writings in Chinese and is especially designed for primary and secondary school. The learning analytic tool, Wikiglass, has been used by school in Hong Kong and mainland China helping teachers and students monitor student contributions, collaboration, progress, and their writing quality in both individual and group projects using Wikis.

What is Wikiglass?

Wiki is widely regarded as a useful tool to facilitate project-based learning, but the amount of learning evidence made available by the tool may discourage teachers from adopting it because of the perceived increase of workload in continuous student assessment.

To tackle this problem, tools have been built to assist teachers in processing and making sense of the large amount of continuous student input. However, few existing tools work with student writings in Chinese and are designed for primary and secondary school teachers who often have heavy workload and may not be expert computer users.
We have built a learning analytic tool, Wikiglass, to help primary and secondary school teachers in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and surrounding regions to monitor student contribution, collaboration, progress, and writing quality in student projects using Wiki.

We have built a learning analytic tool, Wikiglass, to help primary and secondary school teachers in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and surrounding regions to monitor student contribution, collaboration, progress, and writing quality in student projects using Wiki.

Functions and Features

Wikiglass has a wide range of features and functions, with recently added advanced functions of student revision network and cognitive thinking indicators. A number of instructional videos have been produced respectively for teachers and students.

User Guide for Teachers on Advanced Functions of Wikiglass:

User Guide for Students on All Functions of Wikiglass:

Publications

(a) Hu, X., Ip, J., Sadaful, K., Lui, G., & Chu, S. (2016, April). Wikiglass: a learning analytic tool for visualizing collaborative wikis of secondary school students. In Proceedings of the sixth international conference on learning analytics & knowledge (pp. 550-551). ACM.

(b) Hu, X., Yang, C., Qiao, C., Lu, X., & Chu, S. K. (2017, March). New features in Wikiglass, a learning analytic tool for visualizing collaborative work on wikis. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (pp. 616-617). ACM.

Implementation and Evaluation

PBworks and BlueSpice, open-source WIkis, have been used as the platforms for students to collaborate on individual and group inquiry-based projects over a designated period that spans across one semester or one academic year. For individual projects, students work on a topic either assigned by the teacher or selected by themselves with teachers’ guidance. For group projects, students are required to work in groups each consisting of about four to five students. Each individual or group writes their project report in Chinese on their Wiki, with different sections of the report (e.g., Introduction, Methodology, etc.) written on separate pages.  The clear, accurate and timely information provided by Wikiglass can help teachers keep track of student contributions, progress, and their writing quality, based on which they can provide proper interventions to needed individuals and/or groups of students during the learning process instead of after.

Wikiglass is currently being used by several primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Feedback from teachers and students have been highly positive:

What Teachers Say about Wikiglass

• As a supplementary reference on project development
• Offering an overview of class progress and group collaboration
• Providing objective evidence for feedback, intervention and assessment
• Improving assessment of students’ contribution, collaboration and writing quality
• Alleviating administrative workload of constantly checking project Wikis

What Students Say about Wikiglass

• Easy to use
• Attractive visualizations
• Self-monitoring of project progress
• Facilitating planning and scheduling of work
• Recognizing efforts paid
• Facilitating group collaboration
  • Ensuring fair work distribution
  • Helping in identifying free-riders

Further Development

Wikiglass is an ever-growing tool. A professional team of developers are constantly improving Wikiglass in terms of its usability, features and functions, based on suggestions and opinions of the primary users: teachers and students. In discussion with teachers and students, new feature requirements are identified. One of the promising forthcoming functions is a plagiarism-checking plug-in tool in Wikiglass, in response to requests from teachers and students, and also in view of the surging importance of information literacy.

We welcome collaboration of all kinds, with teachers, students, researchers and anyone who is interested. Please do not hesitate to contact us. We are more than happy to get questions, comments, and suggestions from you!