The Vent Learning Analytics Dashboard - and VSON container format for visualization data

Abstract

Education is increasingly more digitized, and dispersed on several platforms, devices and applications. Inspired by domains like business intelligence; learning analytics is becoming increasingly prevalent as a means to improve and adapt the educational field. However, challenges arise when trying to collect and analyze data originating from various sources, as well as when trying to extract meaningful insights from large amounts of data. This thesis documents the development of Vent, an educational dashboard meant to visualize data in an attempt to aid educators in their work, and highlights some of the challenges tied to integrating highly divergent data sources in a coherent manner. The thesis also introduces the VSON data container, conceptualized explicitly to carry data meant for visualization purposes.