Prescriptive analytics motivating distance learning student action: A case study of a student-facing dashboard

Student-facing learning analytics dashboards aim to help students to monitor their study progress, achieve learning goals and develop self-regulation skills. Only few of them present personalised data visualisations and aim to develop agentic students who take remedial action to improve their study habits, learning and performance. In this paper, a student-facing dashboard, designed following principles of participatory research, was tested with 30 undergraduate students, who engaged with it over a period of 4 to 15 weeks and while studying an online course. This is one of the few dashboards available that presents all different types of analytics to students: descriptive, predictive and prescriptive. A mixed methods approach was used to assess its usefulness and impact on motivation to study and take remedial action to support learning. Data analysis showcased that such a dashboard can be “a roadmap to success” by motivating students to study more and improve their performance, in addition to helping with monitoring, planning and reflection. While all dashboard features were perceived as being useful, special value was placed on prescriptive elements, in particular material recommendations and contacting tutors and university support teams, emphasizing the significance of making explicit on a dashboard the actions students should take to improve their performance. Implications for future studies are discussed.