Capturing Learner's Activity Events from a Mobile Learning System Using Adaptive Event Framework

Abstract

Several mobile-enabled solutions for education transformation have been deployed in Africa. Drawbacks of these systems include, a predominant focus on disseminating bulk learning content, student outcomes are measured solely on quantitative performance metrics, a lack of instrumentation to capture fine-grained user interaction data, and finally none of them seem to focus on capturing the contextual factors affecting learners. Hence, there are few chances to fully empower educators to create effective interventions for their students. In this paper, we present an adaptive event framework library that can be embedded within a blended learning environment. It enables the capturing of fine-grained learners activity stream data, including learners sentiment and context information. We conducted a limited controlled experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the event framework. The real time visualizations provide useful insights to teachers in understanding their classroom and/or individual student engagement and progress. Finally, we outline challenges and preliminary solution how such system can be deployed in resource constrained environments.