Enhancing Student Group Projects’ Experience Through Learning Analytics with Moodle OU Wiki

Abstract

This research is a pilot study of structuring student group project learning experience that allows for formative assessment and feedback. In many cases, assessment and feedback of student project work are summative in nature. One reason is that there is usually no platform for a teacher to continuously document the participation of project group students. It is argued that the benefits offered by a more transparent environment to student project work is multi-fold. Students sometimes experience free-rider problems or non-contributing team members. Thus, some students are reluctant to embrace a group project assessment. In other cases, students find it very hard to substantiate a free-rider case as the project work environment is un-structured in such a way that it is hard to collect bit and pieces of evidence from various platforms and channels. That may translate into frustration and unfairness. If analytics are also provided by the collaboration environment, it will facilitate a teacher to make data-driven decisions to follow up, to assess, and to feedback on any group dynamics with evidence. All these calls for a pressing need for a more structured and accountable environment for students to collaboratively develop a group project to maximize the learning outcome while enabling formative assessment and feedback. The research seeks to leverage and customize the existing university-wide Moodle E-learning platform’s tool – the OU wiki, which is a generic collaboration environment, to enhance the project’s feasibility and extendibility while minimizing any associated costs for a large-scale implementation at a later stage. It is posited that the proposed environment would empower students as a learner where their contribution and participation is accounted for and well- documented.