How do students interpret feedback delivered via dashboards?

Providing feedback directly to students on their engagement and performance in educational activities is important to supporting students' learning. However, questions have been raised whether such data representations are adequate to inform reflection, planning and monitoring of students' learning strategies. In this poster we present an investigation of how students interpret feedback delivered via learning analytics dashboards. The findings indicated that most students were able to articulate an interpretation of the feedback presented through the dashboard to identify gaps between their expected and actual performance to inform changes to their study strategies. However, there was also evidence of uncertain interpretation both in terms of the format of the visualization of the feedback and their inability to understand the connection between the feedback and their current strategies. The findings have been used to inform recommendations for ways to enhance the effectiveness of the delivery of feedback through dashboards to provide value to students in developing effective learning strategies to meet their educational goals.