Virtualization increases institutional knowledge of student learning activities
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2012
Authors
Pardo, A.
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Journal article
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Educause Review, 2012; (July):1-9
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As educators, the following questions are always at the back of our minds: Are my students really learning? How are they learning? Should I improve my class? If so, how or what should I change? If I make these changes, what guarantees do I have that they will result in improvements? In a blended learning environment the events recorded by a learning management system (LMS) offer only a partial view of how students participate in a course. When a course uses active learning methodologies, including numerous practical activities, a significant part of the course events are not observed. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
By asking students to install a virtual appliance (a computer within their computer), schools can significantly widen the range of events observed in learning environments to include those occurring while students work on course activities both inside and outside of class. A pilot study at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain found that providing virtual machines to students increased the school's ability to observe student learning activities in blended learning courses that had previously gone unrecorded by our legacy LMS. The data collected offer a comprehensive account of how students interact in a particular learning environment, facilitating various initiatives to improve student learning and engagement. Virtualization gave the school the additional knowledge through observation of student learning activities needed to help answer our questions about their learning and continuing improvement of our courses.
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Copyright 2012 Abelardo Pardo. The text of this EDUCAUSE Review Online article (July 2012) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)