Visualizing user activity in open e-learning contexts: challenges and techniques for operational management

This paper describes the practical application of four visualization techniques that have been developed to deal with high-volume, large time-scaled, and high-dimensional data sets that are characteristic of Internet-based user activity. Visualization techniques can be useful for monitoring and studying online user activity in settings where many thousands of users are involved in web-based educational endeavors. Simple numerical summaries of server requests and server performance trends cannot adequately answer the kinds of questions posed by those who desire to understand e-learner activity in web-based e-learning systems. Tracking and understanding remote users and their distant, round-the-clock activities present major technical and analytical challenges, especially in terms of the sheer scale and volume of the generated usage data. With web-based teaching and learning systems, four aspects of the usage tend to hinder analysis: high density, broad time scales, many variables, and veiled patterns. The paper looks at possible solutions in the application of four visualization techniques, using open source statistics software, in the contexts of key scenarios where such techniques can support operations management and decision making processes.