Are Students Making the Best Use of Distance-Learning?

With the current state of the world it seems like remote learning will be something students will need to get used to. Whether or not this will positively or negatively impact learning and overall academic performance over time is a major question. For that reason, the development of methods for understanding how students are studying and working at home is crucial.

One effective way of doing this is to monitor click-behavior on any given learning management system (LMS) as a study from the University of Texas reported last year. LMSs like Blackboard and Canvas are used by Universities across the nation to provide students with a portal where they can log in to access lecture material, submit work and take exams. The study analyzed LMS navigation data from two separate psychology courses and concluded that students’ click behavior and course performance data were highly replicable across the two groups. Metrics like what time of day students were accessing material on the platform, how long before an exam the next day they were logged on, and even how their SAT scores corelate with study patterns were measured and turned out to be quite consistent. The hope is that tracking data like this will help educators pinpoint effective study habits to guide students better during this uncertain time.