Papers by Srecko Joksimovic
Students' achievement analysis system
Vojnotehnicki glasnik, 2004
The analysis of students' achievements and the examination results recording at the Mili... more The analysis of students' achievements and the examination results recording at the Military Academy (Department of Logistics) is a demanding and time-consuming task. Some efforts were put forth to make that process easier but they did not prove to be efficient enough. ...
Journal of Learning Analytics, Dec 24, 2014
Teaching and learning in networked settings has attracted significant attention recently. The cen... more Teaching and learning in networked settings has attracted significant attention recently. The central topic of networked learning research is human-human and humaninformation interactions occurring within a networked learning environment. The nature of these interactions is highly complex and usually requires a multi-dimensional approach to analyze their effects. Therefore, the main goal of this research is the development of a theoretical model of networked learning that allows for a comprehensive and scalable analysis of how and why learners engage in collaboration in networked communities. The proposed research method, anticipated research outcomes, and contributions to the learning analytics field are discussed.
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK'15), 2015
Connections established between learners via interactions are seen as fundamental for connectivis... more Connections established between learners via interactions are seen as fundamental for connectivist pedagogy. Connections can also be viewed as learning outcomes, i.e. learners’ social capital accumulated through distributed learning environments. We applied linear mixed effects modeling to investigate whether the social capital accumulation interpreted through learners’ centrality to course interaction networks, is influenced by the language learners use to express and communicate in two connectivist MOOCs. Interactions were distributed across the three social media, namely Twitter, blog and Facebook. Results showed that learners in a cMOOC connect easier with the individuals who use a more informal, narrative style, but still maintain a deeper cohesive structure to their communication.
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK'16), 2016
In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the problem of automa... more In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the problem of automating content analysis of student online discussion transcripts. We looked at the problem of coding discussion transcripts for the levels of cognitive presence, one of the three main constructs in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model of distance education. Using Coh-Metrix and LIWC features, together with a set of custom features developed to capture discussion context, we developed a random forest classification system that achieved 70.3% classification accuracy and 0.63 Cohen’s kappa, which is significantly higher than values reported in the previous studies. Besides improvement in classification accuracy, the developed system is also less sensitive to overfitting as it uses only 205 classification features, which is around 100 times less features than in similar systems based on bag-of-words features. We also provide an overview of the classification features most indicative of the different phases of cognitive presence that gives an additional insights into the nature of cognitive presence learning cycle. Overall, our results show great potential of the proposed approach, with an added benefit of providing further characterization of the cognitive presence coding scheme.
Current state and future trends
Proceedins of the Fourth International Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge - LAK '14, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper provides an evaluation of the current state of the field of learning analytic... more ABSTRACT This paper provides an evaluation of the current state of the field of learning analytics through analysis of articles and citations occurring in the LAK conferences and identified special issue journals. The emerging field of learning analytics is at the intersection of numerous academic disciplines, and therefore draws on a diversity of methodologies, theories and underpinning scientific assumptions. Through citation analysis and structured mapping we aimed to identify the emergence of trends and disciplinary hierarchies that are influencing the development of the field to date. The results suggest that there is some fragmentation in the major disciplines (computer science and education) regarding conference and journal representation. The analyses also indicate that the commonly cited papers are of a more conceptual nature than empirical research reflecting the need for authors to define the learning analytics space. An evaluation of the current state of learning analytics provides numerous benefits for the development of the field, such as a guide for under-represented areas of research and to identify the disciplines that may require more strategic and targeted support and funding opportunities.
Computers & Education, 2015
Contemporary literature on online and distance education almost unequivocally argues for the impo... more Contemporary literature on online and distance education almost unequivocally argues for the importance of interactions in online learning settings. Nevertheless, the relationship between different types of interactions and learning outcomes is rather complex. Analyzing 204 offerings of 29 courses, over the period of six years, this study aimed at expanding the current understanding of the nature of this relationship. Specifically, with the use of trace data about interactions and utilizing the multilevel linear mixed modeling techniques, the study examined whether frequency and duration of student–student, student–instructor, student–system, and student–content interactions had an effect of learning outcomes, measured as final course grades. The findings show that the time spent on student–system interactions had a consistent and positive effect on the learning outcome, while the quantity of student–content interactions was negatively associated with the final course grades. The study also showed the importance of the educational level and the context of individual courses for the interaction types supported. Our findings further confirmed the potential of the use of trace data and learning analytics for studying learning and teaching in online settings. However, further research should account for various qualitative aspects of the interactions used while learning, different pedagogical/media features, as well as for the course design and delivery conditions in order to better explain the association between interaction types and the learning achievement. Finally, the results might imply the need for the development of the institutional and program-level strategies for learning and teaching that would promote effective pedagogical approaches to designing and guiding interactions in online and distance learning settings.
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2015
With the steady development of online education and online learning environments, possibilities t... more With the steady development of online education and online learning environments, possibilities to support social interactions between students have advanced significantly. This study examined the relationship between indicators of social presence and academic performance. Social presence is defined as students' ability to engage socially with an online learning community. The results of a multiple regression analysis showed that certain indicators of social presence were significant predictors of final grades in a master's level computer science online course. Moreover, the study also revealed that teaching presence moderated the association between social presence and academic performance, indicating that a course design that increased the level of meaningful interactions between students had a significant impact on the development of social presence, and thus could positively affect students' academic performance. This is especially important in situations when discussions are introduced to promote the development of learning outcomes assessed in courses. Another implication of our results is that indicators of social presence can be used for early detection of students at risk of failing a course. Findings inform research and practice in the emerging field of learning analytics by prompting the opportunities to offer actionable insights into the reasons why certain students are lagging behind.
The Internet and Higher Education, 2015
This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different technology-use profiles on e... more This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different technology-use profiles on educational experience within communities of inquiry, and how they are related to the students' levels of cognitive presence in asynchronous online discussions. Through clustering of students (N = 81) in a graduate distance education engineering course, we identified six different profiles: 1) task-focused users, 2) content-focused no-users, 3) no-users, 4) highly intensive users, 5) content-focused intensive users, and 6) socially-focused intensive users. Identified profiles significantly differ in terms of their use of learning platform and their levels of cognitive presence, with large effect sizes of 0.54 and 0.19 multivariate η2, respectively. Given that several profiles are associated with higher levels of cognitive presence, our results suggest multiple ways for students to be successful within communities of inquiry. Our results also emphasize a need for a different instructional support and pedagogical interventions for different technology-use profiles.
Proceedings of the seventh international conference on Knowledge capture - K-CAP '13, 2013
ABSTRACT One of the most important prerequisites for achieving the Semantic Web vision is semanti... more ABSTRACT One of the most important prerequisites for achieving the Semantic Web vision is semantic annotation of data/resources. Semantic annotation enriches unstructured and/or semistructured content with a context that is further linked to the structured domain-specific knowledge. In particular, ontologybased semantic annotators enable the selection of a specific ontology to annotate content. This paper presents results of an empirical study of recent ontology-based annotators, namely Stanbol, KIM, and SDArch. Specifically, we evaluated the robustness of these annotators with respect to specific features of ontology concepts such as the length of concepts? labels and their linguistic categories (e.g., prepositions and conjunctions). Our results show that although significantly correlated according to most of the conducted evaluations, tools still exhibit their unique features that could be a topic of new research.
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2015
Distributed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are based on the premise that online learning occ... more Distributed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are based on the premise that online learning occurs through a network of interconnected learners. The teachers’ role in distributed courses extends to forming such a network by facilitating communication that connects learners and their separate personal learning environments scattered around the Internet. The study reported in this paper examined who fulfilled such an influential role in a particular distributed MOOC – a connectivist course (cMOOC) offered in 2011. Social network analysis was conducted over a socio-technical network of the Twitter-based course interactions, comprising both human course participants and hashtags; where the latter represented technological affordances for scaling course communication. The results of the week-by-week analysis of the network of interactions suggest that the teaching function becomes distributed among influential actors in the network. As the course progressed, both human and technological actors comprising the network subsumed the teaching functions, and exerted influence over the network formation. Regardless, the official course facilitators preserved a high level of influence over the flow of information in the investigated cMOOC.
Teaching and learning in networked settings has attracted significant attention recently. The cen... more Teaching and learning in networked settings has attracted significant attention recently. The central topic of networked learning research is human-human and humaninformation interactions occurring within a networked learning environment. The nature of these interactions is highly complex and usually requires a multi-dimensional approach to analyze their effects. Therefore, the main goal of this research is the development of a theoretical model of networked learning that allows for a comprehensive and scalable analysis of how and why learners engage in collaboration in networked communities. The proposed research method, anticipated research outcomes, and contributions to the learning analytics field are discussed.
It is widely accepted that the social capital of students -developed through their participation ... more It is widely accepted that the social capital of students -developed through their participation in learning communities -has a significant impact on many aspects of the students' learning outcomes, such as academic performance, persistence, retention, program satisfaction and sense of community. However, the underlying social processes that contribute to the development of social capital are not well understood. By using the well-known Community of Inquiry (CoI) model of distance and online education, we looked into the nature of the underlying social processes, and how they relate to the development of the students' social capital. The results of our study indicate that the affective, cohesive and interactive facets of social presence significantly predict the network centrality measures commonly used for measurement of social capital.
Benefits of social interaction for learning have widely been recognized in educational research a... more Benefits of social interaction for learning have widely been recognized in educational research and practice. The existing body of research knowledge in computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) offers numerous practical approaches that can enhance educational experience in online group activities. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model is one of the best-researched frameworks that comprehensively explains different dimensions of online learning in communities of inquiry. However, individual differences, well-established in educational psychology to affect learning (e.g., emotions, motivation and working memory capacity), have received much less attention in the CSCL and CoI research published to date. This paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated linguistic features of online discussion transcripts coded by the four levels of cognitive presence -a CoI dimension that explains the extent to which a community can construct meaning from the initial practical inquiry to the eventual problem resolution. The automated linguistic analysis, conducted by using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) framework, revealed that certain word categories -reported previously in the literature as accurate indicators of specific psychological characteristics -had distinct distributions for each level of cognitive presence of the CoI framework. The most significant finding of the study is that linguistic proxies of increased cognitive load have unique representation patterns across the four levels of cognitive presence. Consequently, this study legitimizes more research on individual differences in general and on cognitive load theory in particular in communities of inquiry. The paper also discusses implications for educational research, practice, and technology.
In this paper we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the use of text mining... more In this paper we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the use of text mining and text classification for the automation of the content analysis of discussion transcripts within the context of distance education. We used Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and focused on the content analysis of the cognitive presence construct given its central position within the CoI model. Our results demonstrate the potentials of proposed approach; The developed classifier achieved 58.4% accuracy and Cohen's Kappa of 0.41 for the 5-category classification task. In this paper we analyze different classification features and describe the main problems and lessons learned from the development of such a system. Furthermore, we analyzed the use of several novel classification features that are based on the specifics of cognitive presence construct and our results indicate that some of them significantly improve classification accuracy.
Ontology Learning to Analyze Research Trends in Learning Analytics Publications
This paper reports on the results of an analysis of the research proposals submitted to the MOOC ... more This paper reports on the results of an analysis of the research proposals submitted to the MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) funded by the Gates Foundation and administered by Athabasca University. The goal of MRI was to mobilize researchers to engage into critical interrogation of MOOCs. The submissions -266 in Phase 1, out of which 78 was recommended for resubmission in the extended form in Phase 2, and finally, 28 funded -were analyzed by applying conventional and automated content analysis methods as well as citation network analysis methods. The results revealed the main research themes that could form a framework of the future MOOC research: i) student engagement and learning success, ii) MOOC design and curriculum, iii) self-regulated learning and social learning, iv) social network analysis and networked learning, and v) motivation, attitude and success criteria. The theme of social learning received the greatest interest and had the highest success in attracting funding. The submissions that planned on using learning analytics methods were more successful. The use of mixed methods was by far the most popular. Design-based research methods were also suggested commonly, but the questions about their applicability arose regarding the feasibility to perform multiple iterations in the MOOC context and rather a limited focus on technological support for interventions. The submissions were dominated by the researchers from the field of education (75% of the accepted proposals). Not only was this a possible cause of a complete lack of success of the educational technology innovation theme, but it could be a worrying sign of the fragmentation in the research community and the need to increased efforts towards enhancing interdisciplinarity.
This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different teaching presence approaches... more This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different teaching presence approaches in communities of inquiry, and ways in which student–student online discussions with high levels of cognitive presence can be designed. Specifically, this paper proposes that high-levels of cognitive presence can be facilitated in online courses, based on the community of inquiry model, by building upon existing research in i) self-regulated learning through externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and ii) computer-supported collaborative learning through role assignment. We conducted a quasi-experimental study in a fully-online course (N = 82) using six offerings of the course. After performing a quantitative content analysis of online discussion transcripts, a multilevel linear modeling analysis showed the significant positive effects of both externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and role assignment on the level of cognitive presence. Specifically, the results showed that externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding had a higher effect on cognitive presence than extrinsically induced motivation through grades. The results showed the effectiveness of role assignment to facilitate a high-level of cognitive presence. More importantly, the results showed a significant effect of the interaction between externally-facilitated regulation scaffolding and role assignment on cognitive presence. The paper concludes with a discussion of practical and theoretical implications.
Workshop papers by Srecko Joksimovic
Proceedings of the Workshops at the LAK 2014 Conference co-located with 4th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK'14), 2014
In this paper we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the use of text mining... more In this paper we present the results of an exploratory study that examined the use of text mining and text classification for the automation of the content analysis of discussion transcripts within the context of distance education. We used Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and focused on the content analysis of the cognitive presence construct given its central position within the CoI model. Our results demonstrate the potentials of proposed approach; The developed classifier achieved 58.4% accuracy and Cohen’s Kappa of 0.41 for the 5-category classification task. In this paper we analyze different classification features and describe the main problems and lessons learned from the development of such a system. Furthermore, we analyzed the use of several novel classification features that are based on the specifics of cognitive presence construct and our results indicate that some of them significantly improve classification accuracy.
Conference papers by Srecko Joksimovic
Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion
Online learning has become very popular over the last decade. However, there are still many detai... more Online learning has become very popular over the last decade. However, there are still many details that remain unknown about the strategies that students follow while studying online. In this study, we focus on the direction of detecting 'invisible' collaboration ties between students in online learning environments. Specifically, the paper presents a method developed to detect student ties based on temporal proximity of their assignment submissions. The paper reports on findings of a study that made use of the proposed method to investigate the presence of close submitters in two different massive open online courses. The results show that most of the students (i.e., student user accounts) were grouped as couples, though some bigger communities were also detected. The study also compared the population detected by the algorithm with the rest of user accounts and found that close submitters needed a statistically significant lower amount of activity with the platform to achieve a certificate of completion in a MOOC. These results confirm that the detected close submitters were performing some collaboration or even engaged in unethical behaviors, which facilitates their way into a certificate. However, more work is required in the future to specify various strategies adopted by close submitters and possible associations between the user accounts.
Proceedings of the 2015 HOME Conference, 2015
Recent development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOcs) commenced unprescendented interest of t... more Recent development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOcs) commenced unprescendented interest of the general public. To leverage from attention given to MOOCs, understanding of public discourse is essential, as it can give critical insights into the important domains of biggest societal interests. Prevoius research showed the great need for understanding specifics of MOOC adoption around the world and the necessity to better cater to the needs of different markets. With this in mind, this paper presents study that looked specificially at the Europe-related MOOC discourse between 2008 and 2015. We identified important themes in the MOOC public discourse and evaluated their changes over time. Further implications of our findings are also discussed.
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Papers by Srecko Joksimovic
Workshop papers by Srecko Joksimovic
Conference papers by Srecko Joksimovic