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With the increased capability of learning analytics in higher education, more institutions are developing or implementing student dashboards. Despite the emergence of dashboards as an easy way to present data to students, students have had limited involvement in the dashboard development process. As part of a larger program of research examining student and academic perceptions of learning analytics, we report here on work in progress exploring student perceptions of dashboards and student preferences for dashboard features. First, we present findings on higher education students' attitudes towards learning analytic dashboards resulting from four focus groups (N = 41). Thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts identified five key themes relating to dashboards: "provide everyone with the same learning opportunities", "to compare or not to compare", "dashboard privacy", "automate alerts" and "make it meaningful--give me a customizable dashboard". Next we present findings from a content analysis of students' drawings of dashboards demonstrating that students are interested in features that support learning opportunities, provide comparisons to peers and are meaningful to the student. Finally, we present preliminary findings from a survey of higher education students, reinforcing students' desire to choose whether to have a dashboard and to be able to customize their dashboards. These findings highlight the potential for providing students with some level of control over learning analytics as a means to increasing self-regulated learning and academic achievement. Future research directions aimed at better understanding students emotional and behavioral responses to learning analytics feedback on dashboards and alerts are outlined.

In psychology, there has been a growing interest in mixed methods approaches, however, only a minority of published research explicitly use this methodology. This study aimed to explore the full range of attitudes toward mixed methods research in psychology held by students and academics, using the model of attitudes by Eagly and Chaiken as a framework. Fourteen psychology students and seven academics (48% male and 52% female with ages ranging from 19- to 64-years old) were interviewed about their attitudes toward mixed methods research. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicate that while participants were generally open to the methodology, misunderstandings were common, most felt they lacked the skills and experience necessary to conduct this research and many were sceptical of mixed methods researchers' motivations and practices. Identifying attitudes toward mixed methods research has the potential to dispel myths, promote attitudinal change, and increase both the use and teaching of this approach in psychology.

Academic staff members encourage university students to use online student discussion boards within learning management systems to ask and answer questions, share information and engage in discussion. We explore the impact of anonymity on student posting behaviour. An online survey was completed by 131 second year undergraduate psychology students (91% response rate). Overall, students reported being significantly more likely to post to discussion boards when anonymous posting was enabled than when identified posting was required ("d" = 0.49). Students who preferred to post anonymously were significantly less likely to post on discussion boards requiring identification than other students ("eta"[superscript 2] = 0.27). The experimental manipulation of anonymous/identified postings using a simulated discussion board thread revealed no significant differences in the perceived credibility of authors of anonymous and identified messages, or in the likelihood of responding to these messages. A combination of individual level factors; including online privacy concern, self-consciousness and self-efficacy; were predictive of the likelihood of making identified postings ("R"[superscript 2] = 0.387), but only self-efficacy was a significant unique predictor of anonymous postings ("sr"[superscript 2] = 0.05). Educators can consider enabling anonymous postings and providing training to increase student self-efficacy as ways of increasing student engagement through decreasing concerns about self-presentation online.

Abstract Learning analytics enable automated feedback to students through dashboards, reports and alerts. The underlying untested assumption is that providing analytics will be sufficient to improve self-regulated learning. Working within a feedback recipience framework, we begin to test this assumption by examining the impact of learning analytics messages on student affect and academic resilience. Three hundred and twenty undergraduate students completed an online survey and were exposed to three randomly assigned learning analytics alerts (High Distinction, Pass, and Fail grades). Multivariate analyses of variance indicated significant differences between grade levels (large effects), with higher positive affect and lower resilience in response to High Distinction alerts than Pass or Fail alerts. Within each hypothetical grade level, there were no differences in student affect and academic resilience. Based upon systematic changes in feedback sender, message style or whether comparative peer achievement was included or not. These findings indicate that grade level has the largest impact on both affect and academic resilience. The failure of message and sender characteristics to impact on activities that promote self-regulated learning suggests we need to look beyond these characteristics of individual messages to identify drivers of engaging students in self-regulated learning. Highlights • Learning analytics enable automated feedback to students through alerts. • Limited research has examined the impact of alerts on student affect and resilience. • We manipulated various features of hypothetical learning analytics alerts. • We found differences in student affect and resilience based on hypothetical grades. • Message content, style and sender did not impact on student affect and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, higher education institutions are exploring the potential of learning analytics to predict student retention, understand learning behaviors, and improve student learning through providing personalized feedback and support. The technical development of learning analytics has outpaced consideration of ethical issues surrounding their use. Of particular concern is the absence of the student voice in decision-making about learning analytics. We explored higher education students' knowledge, attitudes, and concerns about big data and learning analytics through four focus groups (N = 41). Thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts identified six key themes. The first theme, "Uninformed and Uncertain," represents students' lack of knowledge about learning analytics prior to the focus groups. Following the provision of information, viewing of videos and discussion of learning analytics scenarios three further themes; "Help or Hindrance to Learning," "More than a Number," and "Impeding Independence"; represented students' perceptions of the likely impact of learning analytics on their learning. "Driving Inequality" and "Where Will it Stop?" represent ethical concerns raised by the students about the potential for inequity, bias and invasion of privacy and the need for informed consent. A key tension to emerge was how "personal" vs. "collective" purposes or principles can intersect with "uniform" vs. "autonomous" activity. The findings highlight the need the need to engage students in the decision making process about learning analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undergraduate psychology students have been largely excluded from interprofessional education (IPE) initiatives. In contrast to many health professions, undergraduate psychology students do not engage in work placements as part of their degree, and many enter careers outside the health care context. However, the collaborative skills gained through an IPE experience may well be beneficial to students who work in this wider context. This research examines whether undergraduate psychology students' views of IPE vary according to their planned career directions, and if so, whether the perceived relevance of IPE mediates the relationships. A sample of 188 Australian university undergraduate psychology students completed an online questionnaire following completion of a first-year IPE health sciences program. Path analysis indicated that psychology students' attitudes towards IPE are associated with both professional identification and practitioner orientation, fully mediated through the perceived relevance of IPE to future career and study plans. Stronger professional identification and practitioner orientation were associated with greater perceived relevance and more positive and less negative attitudes towards IPE. Placing a stronger emphasis on the generalizability of IP skills taught may increase students' awareness of the relevance outside of the health context, reducing disengagement of students planning alternative careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the continued reliance on undergraduate students as research participants, there is an absence of valid, reliable measures of student perceptions of educational gains from research participation. In this article, we present two studies outlining the development and initial validation of a new measure, the student perceptions of the educational value of research participation scale. In Study One a pool of 28 items was developed from previous qualitative research and administered to a convenience sample of 68 Australian university student volunteers. Following principal axis factoring, a seven-item unidimensional scale with good internal reliability (α = .82) was developed and validated against an existing measure of reactions to research participation. In Study Two, 104 members of a second-year undergraduate psychology participant pool completed the measure. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a higher order two-factor model (overall α = .82). Across both volunteer and participant pool samples, the educational value of research participation was rated more highly than the costs of research participation (emotional reactions and drawbacks of participating), indicating a positive cost-benefit ratio of research participation. This brief, internally reliable measure can be used in assessing students' perceptions of educational gain in both individual research projects and across research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]