Profiling at-risk students

Profiling at-risk students

by Russell Waldron -
Number of replies: 7
What indicators have you found that could alert a teacher that a student is likely to fail or withdraw? Has Moodle automated that at all? Could it? If you have a favoured method of predicting/reducing your attrition rate, would you like to add it below?

I found these lists, but they are specifically oriented to undergraduate distance students and the organisations did not use Moodle at the time.

In 2002, THE Journal listed these indicators: In 2000, ION stated that an online student should:
  1. Does the student have an external locus of control?
  2. Does the student have low self-efficacy regarding their computer skills?
  3. Does the student have low self-efficacy regarding the course content?
  4. Does the student lack previous experience with online courses?
  5. Did the student enroll solely because of course availability?
  6. Does the student have a low login rate for the course home page?
  7. Is the student reading and writing few messages on the class forum?
  8. Is the student quiet or nonresponsive in the online chat room?
  1. Be open minded about sharing life, work, and educational experiences as part of the learning process.
  2. Be able to communicate through writing.
  3. Be Self-motivated and self-disciplined.
  4. Be willing to "speak up" if problems arise
  5. Be willing and able to commit to 4 to 15 hours per week per course.
  6. Be able to meet the minimum requirements for the program
  7. Accept critical thinking and decision making as part of the learning process.
  8. Have access to a computer and a modem.
  9. Be able to think ideas through before responding.
  10. Feel that high quality learning can take place without going to a traditional classroom.
Regards,

Russell Still-Here Waldron

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In reply to Russell Waldron

Re: Profiling at-risk student

by Bryan Williams -
Hey Russell, I think this is a great idea you have put forth. If a metric could be agreed upon it wouldn't be that difficult to create a block for Teacher/Admin that tracks this information and generates a report that shows at-risk online students. If you take leadership on this I will make development resources available.smile Take a close look at what Moodle currently tracks in Logs.
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In reply to Bryan Williams

Re: Profiling at-risk student

by Russell Waldron -
Brian, that's a great offer!

We already have great information in Gradebook about participation in many activities that are essentially student-content or student-teacher interactions.

However, as a teacher interested in encouraging Social Presence, I'd like to have a quick visualisation of participation in the student-student areas. I have used the course log to see who has not logged in, and I can drill-down on individual participants to see all forum-posts, but I would like to spot lurkers quickly.

ParticipationDashboard.pngI would love to have a visual dashboard of social participation in the course for the whole roll-call, for each day in the last week.

X Absentees. Student did not login to this course on the day.
! Lurkers. Student logged in, but did not contribute in this course on the day.
V Contributors. Student added a rating, comment or post in any forum in the course.

Expected visual patterns:
  • A solid red horizontal line indicates a student's extended absence.
  • A solid yellow horizontal indicates a lurker.
  • A green vertical line suggests a scheduled synchronous activity.
  • A green diagonal suggests that some students are 'following' a student leader.
  • A green horizontal indicates a student with too much time on his hands!
Extensions:
  • It might be useful to count ratings, comments and posts in any activity that allows for those actions (glossary, gallery, blog, wiki, repository...).
  • Some teachers might also want to credit any progress on a gradebook-linked activity.
  • Some teachers might want the timescale to show hours in the last day, or weeks in the last month, instead of days in the last week.
If there are already tools for highlighting non-contributors, please do remind me; in fact, feel welcome to flame me on behalf of all Moodlers!

Cheers,

Russell
Attachment ParticipationDashboard.png
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In reply to Bryan Williams

Re: Profiling at-risk student

by Bryan Williams -
Thanks Sam for the details on completion stuff in 2.0. I've been dragging my feet on jumping in and exploring where it's at today. Last good look I gave 2.0 was a few months back.

Russell, I thought maybe I had misread your first post, until you made the latter. It is participation as you suggest that seems important to track, and activity completion only gives part of the picture in terms of a students willingness to become socially involved in the process. That's something we have had a number of our clients ask about. I'm not sure how to approach that but your suggestions sound like a good starting point.
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In reply to Russell Waldron

Re: Profiling at-risk students

by sam marshall -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
(I don't normally read this forum, may not see replies, was pointed here.)

This is no help for now, but information for the future about the potential of some automated support:

Moodle 2.0 will have a 'completion system' (which I'm posting about because I developed it, here at the Open University). If enabled, this tracks which users have 'completed' each activity. You can let users tick each activity themselves, or you can set it to tick some/all of them automatically according to certain conditions (eg submit a quiz, or just view a page, or 'post [at least] 3 times to the forum').

Teachers can view a list of students and see who has completed what. Oh, and students can always see what they have completed too, so it becomes a personal 'progress list' of sorts for them.

And in activity settings as well as controlling how something counts as completed, you can also set an 'expected date' - this doesn't appear to students, but it shows in the report for teachers. Useful if you want to set a general guideline as to when something should be 'completed' when you are creating the course.

So it's not totally automated but that should help you track who is and isn't reaching a minimum level of participation.

But no it doesn't determine whether the student has 'an external locus of control'. Maybe Moodle also needs a stupid educational jargon detector? smile

--sam

PS Moodle 2.0 is not expected until some time next year, but this particular chunk of code is already done. If anybody is running a Moodle 2 test system, you can search admin pages for 'completion' to turn it on.
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In reply to sam marshall

Re: Profiling at-risk students

by Russell Waldron -
Sam, bless you! big grin I was originally hoping to hear about educators' thought processes, which are often infected with educational jargon.

Brian's reply was in a completely different direction, probably much more immediately fruitful.

I guess it might one day be reasonable to (weakly) infer 'External locus of control' from a pattern of sequence of activities and other communications. I don't imagine anyone will try to the text analysis approach, anytime soon. However, since that trait is probably fairly stable, I imagine that a more reliable method would simply be to ask the student, 'Why did you not finish on time?'

That's great news about Moodle 2.0. I had not noticed that development and I am now really excited. I definitely want to use that completion system, especially the self-reporting capacity. That will be a great adjunct to the Learning Plan construct.

I don't have the resources at present to run a Moodle 2 test system, but I am keen to see it. Would you be able to post a screenshot here? Or a link, if this is already documented somewhere?

Cheers,

Russell
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In reply to sam marshall

Re: Profiling at-risk students

by Martin Dougiamas -
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This is great stuff from Sam and the OU (dance)

For "completeness" ;-) there are also some plans for progress tracking at the larger level of courses and outcomes across the whole site.

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Progress_tracking

Input is very welcome on this specification as the coding has not got very far yet.

In addition, I just noticed this new progress block:

http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1659
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Profiling at-risk students

by Russell Waldron -
Different topic really, but prompted by Martin's post. I wonder whether I have the wrong idea about the Learning Plan. Is it necessarily created by a site admin?

A need for student-created Learning Plans
The medical colleges in Australia expect their members (learners) to create an personal learning plan, selecting activities relevant to their particular professional practice situation and self-judged learning needs. The RACGP has theirs online and ACCRM has RRMEO. Regional training organisations for General Practice are still tediously developing theirs (e.g. GPrime). The plans and level of completion must be visible to the training provider, but maintained by the learner.

I see the same interest in self-selected Learning Plans emerging in the teaching profession (e.g. NSW Institute of Teachers), but not yet implemented in technology. The plans and level of completion must be visible to the training provider, but maintained by the learner.

In devising professional development for colleagues in an IT department, every one was different, and they were all adult learners. Learning Plans were an appropriate process for motivation and to attract funding from the organisation's training budget. The plans and level of completion must be visible to the training provider, but maintained by the learner.

Regards,

Russell
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