Published Research Using Obojobo Next
One Obojobo's primary goals is to provide high resolution data to enable researchers. This gives us an opportunity to include proven and popular approaches back into the software itself!
Here's a few highlights some of the research Obojobo was able to support:
Relationship between students’ online learning behavior and course performance: What contextual information matters?
View here: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.010138
Zhongzhou Chen, Mengyu Xu, Geoffrey Garrido, and Matthew W. Guthrie
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16, 010138 – Published 15 June 2020
This study examines whether including more contextual information in data analysis could improve our ability to identify the relation between students’ online learning behavior and overall performance in an introductory physics course. We created four linear regression models correlating students’ pass-fail events in a sequence of online learning modules with their normalized total course score. Each model takes into account an additional level of contextual information than the previous one, such as student learning strategy and duration of assessment attempts. Each of the latter three models is also accompanied by a visual representation of students’ interaction states on each learning module. We found that the best performing model is the one that includes the most contextual information, including instruction condition, internal condition, and learning strategy. The model shows that while most students failed on the most challenging learning module, those with normal learning behavior are more likely to obtain higher total course scores, whereas students who resorted to guessing on the assessments of subsequent modules tended to receive lower total scores. Our results suggest that considering more contextual information related to each event can be an effective method to improve the quality of learning analytics, leading to more accurate and actionable recommendations for instructors.
Improving accuracy in measuring the impact of online instruction on students' ability to transfer physics problem-solving skills
View here: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.010112
Kyle M. Whitcomb, Matthew W. Guthrie, Chandralekha Singh, and Zhongzhou Chen
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 17, 010112 – Published 3 March 2021
In two earlier studies, we developed a new method to measure students’ ability to transfer physics problem-solving skills to new contexts using a sequence of online learning modules, and implemented two interventions in the form of additional learning modules designed to improve transfer ability. The current paper introduces a new data analysis scheme that could improve the accuracy of the measurement by accounting for possible differences in students’ goal orientation and behavior, as well as revealing the possible mechanism by which one of the two interventions improves transfer ability. Based on a 2×2 framework of self-regulated learning, students with a performance-avoidance oriented goal are more likely to guess on some of the assessment attempts in order to save time, resulting in an underestimation of the student populations’ transfer ability. The current analysis shows that about half of the students had frequent brief initial assessment attempts, and significantly lower correct rates on certain modules, which we think is likely to have originated at least in part from students adopting a performance-avoidance strategy. We then divided the remaining population, for which we can be certain that few students adopted a performance-avoidance strategy, based on whether they interacted with one of the intervention modules designed to develop basic problem-solving skills, or passed that module on their first attempt without interacting with the instructional material. By comparing to propensity score matched populations from a previous semester, we found that the improvement in subsequent transfer performance observed in a previous study mainly came from the latter population, suggesting that the intervention served as an effective reminder for students to activate existing skills, but fell short of developing those skills among those who have yet to master it.
