Assessing group work formatively in higher education poses a significant challenge. The complexity of evaluating individual contributions is compounded by the lack of efficient and effective methods for tracking, analysing and assessing individual engagement and contributions, which can impede timely feedback and the development of group work…

Work-integrated learning (WIL) involves employers and industry in education and training. In order to maximize benefits for all involved, sustainable and reciprocal processes are necessary. While institutions may have internal mechanisms to gather feedback from external partners, the feedback process often tends to be ad hoc. To inform the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of expectation formation and matching for university student volunteers and their hosts. Design/methodology/approach: This research involved a multi-stage data collection process including interviews with student volunteers, and university and host representatives from six…

Increasingly learning analytics (LA) has begun utilising staff- and student-facing dashboards capturing visualisations to present data to support student success and improve learning and teaching. The use of LA is complex, multifaceted and raises many issues for consideration, including ethical and legal challenges, competing stakeholder views and…

In this article we report on the findings of a project funded by the Australian Office for Learning and Teaching and entitled "Learning Analytics: Assisting Universities with Student Retention." While this project was primarily focused on retention as a potential outcome of learning analytics, its application could be related to the…

This study is part of a research programme investigating the dynamics and impacts of learning engagement in a challenge-based digital learning environment. Learning engagement is a multidimensional concept which includes an individual's ability to behaviourally, cognitively, emotionally, and motivationally engage in an on-going learning process.…

Universities have a long history of collecting student feedback using surveys and other mechanisms. The last decade has witnessed a significant shift in how student feedback is systematically collected, analysed, reported, and used by governments and institutions. This shift is due to a number of factors, including changes in government policy…

Research into self-regulated learning has traditionally relied upon self-reported data. While there is a rich body of literature that has extracted invaluable information from such sources, it suffers from a number of shortcomings. For instance, it has been shown that surveys often provide insight into students' perceptions about learning rather…

When used effectively, reflective writing tasks can deepen learners' understanding of key concepts, help them critically appraise their developing professional identity, and build qualities for lifelong learning. As such, reflective writing is attracting substantial interest from universities concerned with experiential learning, reflective…

There are many different aspects of statistics. Statistics involves mathematics, computing, and applications to almost every field of endeavour. Each aspect provides an opportunity to spark someone's interest in the subject. In this paper we discuss some ethical aspects of statistics, and describe how an introduction to ethics has been…

Conducting qualitative research in any discipline warrants two actions: accessing participants and eliciting their ideas. In chemistry education research (CER), survey techniques have been used to increase access to participants and diversify samples. Interview tasks (such as card sorting, using demonstrations, and using simulations) have been…

This article summarizes the methods, observations, challenges and implications for exploratory analysis drawn from two learning analytics research projects. The cases include an analysis of a games-based virtual performance assessment and an analysis of data from 52,000 students over a 5-year period at a large Australian university. The complex…

Recent systematic reviews have found that the participation of adolescents and young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) within research is limited despite an increasing international recognition of the importance of incorporating the views of all children and young people on matters that affect their lives. The purpose of this current…

Effective mining of data from online submission systems offers the potential to improve educational outcomes by identifying student habits and behaviours and their relationship with levels of achievement. In particular, it may assist in identifying students at risk of performing poorly, allowing for early intervention. In this paper we investigate…

Feedback is known to have a large influence on student learning gains, and the emergence of online tools has greatly enhanced the opportunity for delivering timely, expressive, digital feedback and for investigating its learning impacts. However, to date there have been no large quantitative investigations of the feedback provided by large teams…