Improving Students’ Self-awareness by Analyzing Course Discussion Forum Data

Arta Farahmand, M. Ali Akber Dewan, Fuhua Lin, Wu Yuin Hwang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPublished Conference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The growing demand for self-paced online learning (SPOL) courses lead to post-secondary institutions exploring how information technology can be used to improve the quality of SPOL courses by evaluating teaching and learning strategies, methods, activities, and the way students engage with their studies. One of the main barriers in SPOL is that students may feel isolated as they learn in an individualized mode and collaborative learning could be difficult to realize. The isolation may be lessened when students interact in a course discussion forum. To improve students’ self-awareness, it is needed to collect and analyze the forum data and visualize students’ sentiments to provide feedback to the students. This paper presents a model for sentiment analysis using natural language processing techniques to visualize students’ affective states towards the course as a strategy to enhance students’ self-awareness. We used the Stanford MOOC Posts dataset, from Stanford University’s eleven public online courses to test the proposed model. Finally, the paper presents a method to visualize the insights gained from the analysis in a student-facing intelligent learning dashboard (SF-iLDs) to support students’ self-awareness of their sentiment towards the course to encourage adjustments to the level of engagement.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdaptive Instructional Systems - 5th International Conference, AIS 2023, Held as Part of the 25th HCI International Conference, HCII 2023, Proceedings
EditorsRobert A. Sottilare, Jessica Schwarz
Pages3-14
Number of pages12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event5th International Conference on Adaptive Instructional Systems, AIS 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 23 Jul. 202328 Jul. 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14044 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference5th International Conference on Adaptive Instructional Systems, AIS 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period23/07/2328/07/23

Keywords

  • Natural language processing
  • self-paced online learning
  • sentiment analysis
  • student engagement

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