There is a proliferation of learning analytics (LA) dashboards aimed at supporting teachers. Yet, teachers still find it challenging to make sense of LA dashboards, thereby making informed decisions. Two main strategies to address this are emerging: i) upskilling teachers’ data literacy; ii) improving the explanatory design features of current dashboards (e.g., adding visual cues or text) to minimise the skills required by teachers to effectively use dashboards. While each approach has its own trade-offs, no previous work has explored the interplay between the dashboard design and such "data skills". In this paper, we explore how teachers with varying visualisation literacy (VL) skills use LA dashboards enhanced with (explanatory) data storytelling elements. We conducted a quasi-experimental study with 23 teachers of varied VL inspecting two versions of an authentic multichannel dashboard enhanced with data storytelling elements. We used an eye-tracking device while teachers inspected the students’ data captured from Zoom and Google Docs, followed by interviews. Results suggest that high VL teachers adopted complex exploratory strategies and were more sensitive to subtle inconsistencies in the design; while low VL teachers benefited the most from more explicit data storytelling guidance such as accompanying complex graphs with narrative and semantic colour encoding.

One of the ultimate goals of several learning analytics (LA) initiatives is to close the loop and support students’ and teachers’ reflective practices. Although there has been a proliferation of end-user interfaces (often in the form of dashboards), various limitations have already been identified in the literature such as key stakeholders not being involved in their design, little or no account for sense-making needs, and unclear effects on teaching and learning. There has been a recent call for human-centred design practices to create LA interfaces in close collaboration with educational stakeholders to consider the learning design, and their authentic needs and pedagogical intentions. This paper addresses the call by proposing a question-driven LA design approach to ensure that end-user LA interfaces explicitly address teachers’ questions. We illustrate the approach in the context of synchronous online activities, orchestrated by pairs of teachers using audio-visual and text-based tools (namely Zoom and Google Docs). This study led to the design and deployment of an open-source monitoring tool to be used in real-time by teachers when students work collaboratively in breakout rooms, and across learning spaces.

One of the ultimate goals of several learning analytics (LA) initiatives is to close the loop and support students' and teachers' reflective practices. Although there has been a proliferation of end-user interfaces (often in the form of dashboards), various limitations have already been identified in the literature such as little account for sensemaking needs. This paper addresses these limitations by proposing a question-driven LA design approach to ensure that end-user LA interfaces explicitly address teachers' questions. We illustrate this in the context of synchronous online activities orchestrated by pairs of teachers using audio-visual and text-based tools (Zoom and Google Docs). This led to the design of an open-source monitoring tool to be used in real-time by teachers when students work collaboratively in breakout rooms, and across learning spaces.

We have seen a dramatic increase in the adoption of teleconferencing systems such as Zoom for remote teaching and working. Although designed primarily for traditional video conferencing scenarios, these platforms are actually being deployed in many diverse contexts. As such, Zoom offers little to aid hosts' understanding of attendee participation and often hinders participant agency. We introduce ZoomSense : an open-source, scalable infrastructure built upon 'virtual meeting participants', which exposes real-time meta-data, meeting content and host controls through an easy to use abstraction - so that developers can rapidly and sustainably augment Zoom.