From micro to macro: analyzing activity in the ROLE Sandbox

Current learning services are increasingly based on standard Web technologies and concepts. As by-product of service operation, Web logs capture and contextualize user interactions in a generic manner, in high detail, and on a massive scale. At the same time, we face inventions of data standards for capturing and encoding learner interactions tailored to learning analytics purposes. However, such standards are often focused on institutional and management perspectives or biased by their intended use. In this paper, we argue for Web logs as valuable data sources for learning analytics on all levels of Bronfenbrenner's Ecological System Theory and introduce a simple framework for Web log data enrichment, processing and further analysis. Based on an example data set from a management service for widget-based Personal Learning Environments, we illustrate our approach and discuss the applicability of different analysis techniques along with their particular benefits for learners.

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