Dragan Gasevic

University of Edinburgh | UoE · School of Informatics

Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) leverages advanced sensing technologies and artificial intelligence to capture complex learning processes, but integrating diverse data sources into cohesive insights remains challenging. This study introduces a novel methodology for integrating latent class analysis (LCA) within MMLA to map monomodal behavioura...

Learning analytics dashboards (LADs) simplify complex learner data into accessible visualisations, providing actionable insights for educators and students. However, their educational effectiveness has not always matched the sophistication of the technology behind them. Explanatory and interactive LADs, enhanced by generative AI (GenAI) chatbots, h...

Objective To identify latent clusters among urological patients by examining hospitalisation rate trajectories and their association with risk factors and outcome quality indicators. Materials and methods Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset, containing information on all hospital admissions in Victoria from 2009 to 2019. The top twenty ICD-10 prim...

Background Dashboards play a prominent role in learning analytics (LA) research. In collaboration activities, dashboards can show traces of team participation. They are often evaluated based on students' perceived satisfaction and engagement with the dashboard. However, there is a notable methodological gap in understanding how these dashboards sup...

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), achieving human-like capabilities in interpreting, summarising, creating, and predicting language, has sparked significant interest, leading to extensive exploration and discussion in educational applications. However, the frontline practice of education stakeholders or the conceptual discussion of theori...

Automatic Short Answer Grading (ASAG) is a prominent area of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED). Despite much research, developing ASAG systems is challenging, even when focused on a single subject, mostly due to the variability in length and content of students' answers. While recent research has explored Large Language Models (LLMs) to e...

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology into education requires precise measurement of GenAI literacy to ensure that learners and educators possess the skills to engage with and critically evaluate this transformative technology effectively. Existing instruments often rely on self-reports, which may be biased....

Learning Analytics (LA) is one of the world’s most influential research fields related to educational technology. Among many themes that the LA community considers, the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms has been largely adopted to extract information from textual data generated in learning environments (e.g., student essay...

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) holds the potential to transform the delivery, cultivation and evaluation of human learning. Here the authors examine the integration of GenAI as a tool for human learning, addressing its promises and challenges from a holistic viewpoint that integrates insights from learning sciences, educational technolo...

Despite growing interest in applying human-centred design methods to create learning analytics (LA) systems, most efforts have concentrated on initial design phases, with limited exploration of how LA tools and practices can co-evolve during the actual learning and teaching activities. This paper examines how a human-centred LA dashboard can be fur...

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are highly beneficial to the public. However, much research demonstrated low completion numbers of MOOC learners. Several factors have been identified as influential factors in the success of MOOC learners. However, a few studies examined the extent to which prior knowledge is associated with completion rates, le...

Generative AI (GenAI) agents offer a potentially scalable approach to support comprehending complex data visualisations, a skill many individuals struggle with. While data storytelling has proven effective, there is little evidence regarding the comparative effectiveness of GenAI agents. To address this gap, we conducted a randomised controlled stu...

Embodied collaborative learning, intertwining verbal and physical behaviors, is an intricate learning process demanding a multifaceted approach for comprehensive understanding. Prior studies in this field have often neglected the temporal dynamics and the interplay between verbal and bodily behaviors in collaborative learning settings. This study b...

Engagement in self-regulated learning (SRL) may improve academic achievements and support development of lifelong learning skills. Despite its educational potential, many students find SRL challenging. Educational chatbots have a potential to scaffold or externally regulate SRL processes by interacting with students in an adaptive way. However, to...

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) holds the potential to transform the delivery, cultivation, and evaluation of human learning. This Perspective examines the integration of GenAI as a tool for human learning, addressing its promises and challenges from a holistic viewpoint that integrates insights from learning sciences, educational techno...

In highly immersive, team-based healthcare simulations, students must collaborate effectively to complete open-ended learning tasks. These often require students to move among multiple locations within the physical learning space, 1 requiring the development of effective communication tactics to manage complex team dynamics and multiple concurrent...

Physiological synchrony and arousal are increasingly utilised to understand students' affective and cognitive states, such as stress, which can influence their learning performance and satisfaction in collaborative settings. However, it remains uncertain whether these physiological indicators can meaningfully reflect students' stress and learning p...

This study explores the challenge of sentence-level AI-generated text detection within human-AI collaborative hybrid texts (abbreviated as hybrid texts). Existing studies of AI-generated text detection for hybrid texts often rely on synthetic datasets. These typically involve hybrid texts with a limited number of boundaries, e.g., single-boundary h...

Background Learners' writing skills are critical to their academic and professional development. Previous studies have shown that learners' self‐assessment during writing is essential for assessing their writing products and monitoring their writing processes. However, conducting practical self‐assessments of writing remains challenging for learner...

Background Study Peer feedback has been used as an effective instructional strategy to enhance students' learning in higher education. Objectives This paper reports on the findings of an explorative study that aimed to increase our understanding of the nature and role of peer feedback in the students' learning process in a computer‐supported colla...

Feedback is essential in learning. The emerging concept of feedback literacy underscores the skills students require for effective use of feedback. This highlights students’ responsibilities in the feedback process. Yet, there is currently a lack of mechanisms to understand how students make sense of feedback and whether they act on it. This gap ma...

Multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) offers the potential to provide evidence‐based insights into complex learning phenomena such as collaborative learning. Yet, few MMLA applications have closed the learning analytics loop by being evaluated in real‐world educational settings. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an MMLA solution in enhancing...

The advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has revolutionized the field of writing, marking a shift towards human-AI collaborative writing in education. However, the dynamics of human-AI interaction in the collaborative writing process are not well understood, and thus it remains largely unknown how human learning can be effectively sup...

Various machine learning approaches have gained significant popularity for the automated classification of educational text to identify indicators of learning engagement -- i.e. learning engagement classification (LEC). LEC can offer comprehensive insights into human learning processes, attracting significant interest from diverse research communit...

Effective collaboration and teamwork skills are critical in high‐risk sectors, as deficiencies in these areas can result in injuries and risk of death. To foster the growth of these vital skills, immersive learning spaces have been created to simulate real‐world scenarios, enabling students to safely improve their teamwork abilities. In such learni...

Integrating generative AI (GAI) into higher education is crucial for preparing a future generation of GAI-literate students. Yet a thorough understanding of the global institutional adoption policy remains absent, with most of the prior studies focused on the Global North and the promises and challenges of GAI, lacking a theoretical lens. This stud...

Learning analytics dashboards (LADs) serve as pivotal tools in transforming complex learner data into actionable insights for educational stakeholders. Despite their potential, the effectiveness of LADs, particularly the visualisations they utilise, has been under scrutiny. Concerns have been raised about their potential to cause cognitive overload...

Automatic Essay Scoring (AES) is a well-established educational pursuit that employs machine learning to evaluate student-authored essays. While much effort has been made in this area, current research primarily focuses on either (i) boosting the predictive accuracy of an AES model for a specific prompt (i.e., developing prompt-specific models), wh...

The recent large language models (LLMs), e.g., ChatGPT, have been able to generate human-like and fluent responses when provided with specific instructions. While admitting the convenience brought by technological advancement, educators also have concerns that students might leverage LLMs to complete their writing assignments and pass them off as t...

There is a growing interest in creating Learning Analytics (LA) systems that incorporate student perspectives. Yet, many LA systems still lean towards a technology-centric approach, potentially overlooking human values and the necessity of human oversight in automation. Although some recent LA studies have adopted a human-centred design stance, the...

Learning analytics (LA) holds a promise to transform education by utilizing data for evidence-based decision-making. Yet, its application in early childhood education (ECE) remains relatively under-explored. ECE plays a crucial role in fostering fundamental numeracy and literacy skills. While standardized tests was intended to be used to monitor st...

The shift toward digitally-based education has emphasised the need for learners to have strong skills for self-regulated learning (SRL). The use of scaffolding prompts is seen as an effective way to stimulate SRL and enhance academic outcomes. A key aspect of SRL scaffolding prompts is the degree to which they are complied to by students. Complianc...

To meet the growing demand for future professionals who can present information to an audience and create quality written products, educators are increasingly assigning writing assignments that require students to gather information from multiple sources, reorganise and reinterpret knowledge from source materials, and plan for rhetorical structure...

Advancements in Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) have the potential to enhance the development of effective teamwork skills and foster reflection on collaboration dynamics in physical learning environments. Yet, only a few MMLA studies have closed the learning analytics loop by making MMLA solutions immediately accessible to educators to suppor...

Dashboards are increasingly used in education to provide teachers and students with insights into learning. Yet, existing dashboards are often criticised for their failure to provide the contextual information or explanations necessary to help students interpret these data. Data Storytelling (DS) is emerging as an alternative way to communicate ins...

A sophisticated grasp of self-regulated learning (SRL) skills has become essential for learners in computer-based learning environment (CBLE). One aspect of SRL is the plan-making process, which, although emphasized in many SRL theoretical frameworks, has attracted little research attention. Few studies have investigated the extent to which learner...

Even though the engagement in self-regulated learning (SRL) has been shown to boost academic performance, SRL skills of many learners remain underdeveloped. They often struggle to productively navigate multiple cognitive, affective, metacognitive and motivational (CAMM) processes in SRL. To provide learners with the required SRL support, it is esse...

Temporality in Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) has two perspectives: one as a passage of time and the other as an ordered sequence of events. Each of these conceptions is distinct and requires independent considerations. Only a single analytic method is not sufficient in adequately capturing both these facets of temporality. Yet, most research uses a...

Individual behavioral engagement is an important indicator of active learning in collaborative settings, encompassing multidimensional behaviors mediated through various interaction modes. Little existing work has explored the use of multimodal process data to understand individual behavioral engagement in face-to-face collaborative learning settin...

Learning analytics (LA) holds the promising potential of facilitating learners' self-regulated learning (SRL) during maker activities, though the impacts of LA support on learners' SRL strategies in maker activities remain under-explored. Thus, this study conducted a classroom quasi-experiment with 101 students in a university-wide general educatio...

Assessment feedback is important to student learning. Learning analytics (LA) powered by artificial intelligence exhibits profound potential in helping instructors with the laborious provision of feedback. Inspired by the recent advancements made by Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models, we conducted a study to examine the extent to which...

Background Learner profiles detected from digital trace data are typically triangulated with survey data to explain those profiles based on learners' internal conditions (e.g., motivation). However, survey data are often analysed with limited consideration of the interconnected nature of learners' internal conditions. Objectives Aiming to enable a...

Learning analytics (LA) adoption is a challenging task for higher education institutions (HEIs) since it involves different aspects of the academic environment, such as information technology infrastructure, human resource management, ethics, and pedagogical issues. Therefore, it is necessary to provide institutions with supporting instruments to d...

Effective collaboration and team communication are critical across many sectors. However, the complex dynamics of collaboration in physical learning spaces, with overlapping dialogue segments and varying participant interactions, pose assessment challenges for educators and self-reflection difficulties for students. Epistemic network analysis (ENA)...

In a higher education context, students are expected to take charge of their learning by deciding “what” to learn and “how” to learn. While the learning analytics (LA) community has seen increasing research on the “how” to learn part (i.e., researching methods for supporting students in their learning journey), the “what” to learn part is still und...

Self‐regulated learning (SRL) is an essential skill to achieve one's learning goals. This is particularly true for online learning environments (OLEs) where the support system is often limited compared to a traditional classroom setting. Likewise, existing research has found that learners often struggle to adapt their behaviour to the self‐regulato...

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), exemplified by ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other state-of-the-art large language models and diffusion models, holds significant potential for transforming education and enhancing human productivity. While the prevalence of GenAI in education has motivated numerous research initiatives, integrating these tech...

Scaffolds that support self‐regulated learning (SRL) have been found to improve learning outcomes. The effects of scaffolds can differ depending on how learners use them and how specific scaffolds might influence learning processes differently. Personalized scaffolds have been proposed to be more beneficial for learning due to their adaptivity to l...

Recent years have witnessed a marked increase in both academic proposals and industrial adoptions of blockchain technology. However, a majority of the projects remain at the stage of prototype proposals and their real-world deployment has not met the anticipated level. This gap can be attributed to three major barriers - technical difficulties, hum...