The ASU Learning at Scale (L@S) Digital Learning Network

In Year 1, ASU L@S project will produce platform specification documents and prototypes through collaboration with ASU researchers, administration, instructors, and students with guidance from the Advisory Board. Years 2 and 3 of the project will involve continued iterative design of the digital learning platform. Year 2 activities will also include the development of personnel infrastructure and procedures as well as initial small scale usability studies. Year 3 activities include feasibility studies that will inform platform refinement of components and procedures. Beginning in Year 3, the platform will be able to conduct multiple studies that will be used for continued refinement in Year 4. In project Years 4 and 5, the platform will be released for research use. In Year 5, continued collaboration with the Digital Learning Network will be used to continue refining the platform and procedures.

A primary aim of this project is to develop the data and policy infrastructure necessary to enhance features, dashboards, data sets, data-sharing tools, and other system components needed for researchers without access to identified data to conduct collaborative research on ASU Online students and courses. The platform is ultimately envisioned to support multiple types of research including analyses of existing data, efficacy studies, replication studies, rapid A/B testing, and design studies with the overarching objective of contributing to theories of how people learn. ASU L@S will iteratively develop the capacity to collect multiple types of user activity and interaction data (e.g., interaction log data, response accuracy, homework completion, time spent, natural language input), rich demographic and user data (e.g., gender, ethnicity, age, socio-economic status proxies, part-time/full-time status, transfer or other admit type), as well as multiple types of education outcomes (e.g., learning, achievement, persistence, progress in postsecondary education, literacy, retention, performance). The platform infrastructure will be developed in anticipation of new, as-yet-undefined sources providing a flexible framework designed to accommodate emerging prioritized data sources and generating new views into the learning process: pulling, organizing, and connecting data from the student information system, learning management system, student support system as well as learning tools interoperability integrated partner learning tools of research interest. Drawing from the major ASU data sources, the team will conduct several experiments that will lead to a prototype of an aggregated data warehouse specifically for external researchers.