Designing analytics for the Living Physics Portal Stephanie Williams, Chandra Turpen, (University of Maryland) and Lyle Barbato (AAPT) What is the Living Physics Portal?
2 What does Analytics mean?
Analytics encompasses all of the actions a user can make that leave a trace online. These include clicks on the website, leaving comments, opening new tabs, length of sessions etc.
From users’ analytical data, we can attempt to make claims about their interactions with the website, and what influences their online participation. Why are we tracking this?
The Living Physics Portal strives to develop community. Part of this community building includes in person events and synchronous online working groups. We assume the different aspects of the Portal and it’s community will appeal to users’ over time, so we want to explore what triggers shifts in users’ participation. 4 Persona Key quote Descriptions
Nathan the “I’ve never written labs from scratch, and New faculty with no real connection to the IPLS community. Novice I’m worried about doing that.” Wants to improve his course evaluations.
Tanika the “I’m never not thinking about what could I Has been teaching for a few years, on the fringe of the IPLS Tinkerer put into this physics for bio majors.” community. Listens carefully to student concerns, e.g. MCAT readiness.
Pablo the “I’ve really started to look more into the Experienced in active learning pedagogies, connected to IPLS Practitioner IPLS community and really try to reach my community. Embarking on major course transformations. students.”
Michelle the “I realized that there’s a delightful group of Respected thought leader in the IPLS community for Master students but the course just wasn’t a good transforming IPLS courses and greater field. fit for them.”
Anna the “I’m always looking for innovative new Experienced in active learning pedagogies. Newly aware of AAPT regular pedagogy and materials to bring to my the IPLS community. Eager to improve relevance and students.” engagement.
Benson the “Physics enhances what we’re doing Uses traditional pedagogies. On the fringe of the IPLS Biophysicist already... we’re adding to our biology community. Sees a lack of good biology integration in others’5 understanding.” teaching. Making a model
⬡ Wanted to track users interactions over time, with the website through analytics ⬡ Needed to categorize actions by their interactiveness with other users and the portal design ⬡ Need a time-dependant representation to be able to determine impact of events 6 What actions are in each category? ● Observing (O) ○ viewing, browsing, filtering, or searching ● Networking (N) ○ bookmarking resources, downloading resources, or following other users ● Dialoguing (D) ○ commenting, responding to a comment, or sharing an implementation report ● Creating ○ filling in metadata on an instructional resource(s), and contributing a resource ● Intersecting realms ○ Interpreting (C+D); Collecting (N+C); Connecting (N+D) ○ Remixing (C+D+N): contributing adaptations of resources with updated metadata that justify one’s changes
Inspired by Fields, D. A., Kafai, Y. B., & Giang, M. T. (2016). Coding by Choice: A Transitional Analysis of Social Participation Patterns and Programming Contributions in the Online Scratch Community. In U. Cress, J. Moskaliuk, & H. Jeong (Eds.), Mass Collaboration and Education (pp. 209–240). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13536-6_11 7 Michelle the “I realized that there’s a Respected thought Master delightful group of students leader in the IPLS but the course just wasn’t community for a good fit for them.” transforming IPLS courses and greater field.
Potential Trajectory ● Came in as a seed contributor, putting their materials on the portal. They have a lot to share, and works on it for a while (t1) ● As Michelle works, they explores some of the other work people have posted on the portal, they follow a couple users (t2) ● Michelle decides to comment and give some advice to others on their work, while continuing to work on their next set of materials (t3)
8 Michelle the “I realized that there’s a Respected thought Master delightful group of students leader in the IPLS but the course just wasn’t community for a good fit for them.” transforming IPLS courses and greater field.
Potential Trajectory ● Came in as a seed contributor, putting their materials on the portal. They have a lot to share, and works on it for a while (t1) ● As Michelle works, they explores some of the other work people have posted on the portal, they follow a couple of people (t2) ● Michelle decides to comment and give some advice to others on their work, while continuing the work on their next set of materials. They download others’ work, and contribute an adaptation (t3)
9 Anna the AAPT “I’m always looking for Experienced in active regular innovative new pedagogy learning pedagogies. and materials to bring to Newly aware of the IPLS my students.” community. Eager to improve relevance and engagement.
Potential Trajectory ● Came in looking for materials with new pedagogies. Skims through resources on the portal, bookmarks a few for future use (t1) ● Anna begins to follow and talk with other people on the Portal through comments. She continues to bookmark resources to use (t2) ● Anna continues to discuss with people on the portal, sending in implementation reports of the materials she has used. She is no longer scouring for new lessons at this time (t3)
10 Future work
⬡ Explore time-dependent representations of our analytics model. ⬡ Track specific users’ data from consenting participants. ⬡ Investigate how effective certain community activities are at cultivating: ∙ online Portal participation ∙ a sense of remuneration, influence, belonging, and significance (RIBS).
11 Thanks! Any questions? You can find me at: @SpaceSteph18 [email protected]
12 Credits
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13 Presentation design
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