Jelena Jovanovic

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Belgrade

Supporting learning and teaching at scale requires access to large and high‐quality content and datasets for analysis and innovation. With rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing demand for data, synthetic data has emerged as a potential solution for addressing these challenges. This editorial introduces the contributions of...

High‐volume, high‐quality and diverse datasets are crucial for advancing research in the education field. However, such datasets often contain sensitive information that poses significant privacy challenges. Traditional anonymisation techniques fail to meet the privacy standards required by regulations like GDPR, prompting the need for more robust...

This paper addresses the challenge of balancing learner data privacy with the use of data in learning analytics (LA) by proposing a novel framework by applying Differential Privacy (DP). The need for more robust privacy protection keeps increasing, driven by evolving legal regulations and heightened privacy concerns, as well as traditional anonymiz...

Higher education institutions are increasingly seeking ways to leverage the available educational data to make program and course quality improvements. The development of automated curriculum analytics can play a substantial role in this effort by bringing novel and timely insights into course and program quality. However, the adoption of curriculu...

Privacy poses a significant obstacle to the progress of learning analytics (LA), presenting challenges like inadequate anonym ization and data misuse that current solutions struggle to address. Synthetic data emerges as a potential remedy, offering robust privacy protection. However, prior LA research on synthetic data lacks thorough evaluation, es...

In response to the evolving demands of the contemporary workplace, higher education (HE) institutions are increasingly emphasising the development of transversal skills and graduate attributes (GAs). The development of GAs, such as effective communication, collaboration, and lifelong learning, are non-linear and follow distinct trajectories for ind...

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...

Prediction of learners’ course performance has been a central theme in learning analytics (LA) since the inception of the field. The main motivation for such predictions has been to identify learners who are at risk of low achievement so that they could be offered timely support based on intervention strategies derived from analysis of learners’ da...

Preparatory learning tasks are considered critical for student success in flipped classroom courses. However, less isknown regarding which learning strategies students use and when they use those strategies in a flipped classroomcourse. In this study, we aimed to address this research gap. In particular, we investigated mutual connectionsbetween le...

Learning strategies are important catalysts of students' learning. Research has shown that students with effective learning strategies are more likely to have better academic achievement. This study aimed to investigate students' adoption of learning strategies in different course implementations, the transfer of learning strategies between courses...

Automatic grading of short answers is an important task in computer-assisted assessment (CAA). Recently, embeddings, as semantic-rich textual representations, have been increasingly used to represent short answers and predict the grade. Despite the recent trend of applying embeddings in automatic short answer grading (ASAG), there are no systematic...

Earning Open Badges instead of regular grades and credits can be a motivating factor for high-performing students in terms of attending classes and completing assignments in extracurricular courses, but to what extent? And for what student profiles? To tackle these questions, we conducted a quantitative study with high-performing students. Each stu...

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that students with effective learning strategies are more likely to have better academic achievement. Existing research has mostly focused on a single course or two, while longitudinal studies remain scarce. The present study examines the longitudinal sequence of students' strategies, their succession, consisten...

Predictors of student academic success do not always replicate well across different learning designs, subject areas, or educational institutions. This suggests that characteristics of a particular discipline and learning design have to be carefully considered when creating predictive models in order to scale up learning analytics. This study aimed...

The paper proposes EXPLODE, a new model of exploratory learning environment for teaching and learning neural networks. The EXPLODE model is about pedagogically instrumenting a software development environment to transform it into an exploratory learning environment for neural networks. Such an environment is particularly aimed for students who are...

Researchers have already observed social contagion effects in both in-person and online interactions. However, such studies have primarily focused on users’ beliefs, mental states, and interests. In this article, we expand the state of the art by exploring the impact of social contagion on social alignment, i.e., whether the decision to socially al...

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have already shown a great potential to be used as an alternative model for teacher professional development (TPD). Not only do MOOCs offer relevant content and activities, but they also provide opportunities for strengthening the skills for self-regulated learning of teachers as life-long learners. In this study...

The ability to develop new skills and competencies is a central concept of lifelong learning. Research to date has largely focused on the processes and support individuals require to engage in upskilling, re-learning or training. However, there has been limited attention examining the types of support that are necessary to assist a learner’s transi...

Video in education has become pervasive. Globally, educators are recording instructional videos to augment their students’ learning and, in many contexts, replace face-to-face lectures. However, the mere act of watching a video is primarily a passive learning experience likely leading to lack of student engagement hindering learning. Active learnin...

Predictive modelling of academic success and retention has been a key research theme in Learning Analytics. While the initial work on predictive modelling was focused on the development of general predictive models, portable across different learning settings, later studies demonstrated the drawbacks of not considering the specificities of course d...

Background Current text mining tools supporting abstract screening in systematic reviews are not widely used, in part because they lack sensitivity and precision. We set out to develop an accessible, semi-automated “workflow” to conduct abstract screening for systematic reviews and other knowledge synthesis methods. Methods We adopt widely recomme...

In this paper, we empirically validate Tinto's Student Integration model, in particular, the predictions the model makes regarding both students' academic outcomes and their dropout decisions. In doing so, we analyse three decades' worth of student enrolments at an Australian university and present a novel methodological approach using graph embedd...

Social interactions through online social media have become a daily routine of many, and the number of those whose real world (offline) and online lives have become intertwined is continuously growing. As such, the interplay of individuals' online and offline activities has been the subject of numerous research studies, the majority of which explor...

Generalizability of the value of methods based on learning analytics remains one of the big challenges in the field of learning analytics. One approach to testing generalizability of a method is to apply it consistently in different learning contexts. This study extends a previously published work by examining the generalizability of a learning ana...

In information retrieval, the task of query performance prediction (QPP) is concerned with determining in advance the performance of a given query within the context of a retrieval model. QPP has an important role in ensuring proper handling of queries with varying levels of difficulty. Based on the extant literature, query specificity is an import...

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Facilitation of social interactions in Massive Open Online Courses can benefit from conceptualizing forum sub-populations through a networked lens. Such a lens implies that forum interactions represent a network of learners with heterogeneous levels of commitment to forum activity. A networked lens helps capture forum communities, so-called forum r...

Query Performance Prediction (QPP) is concerned with estimating the effectiveness of a query within the context of a retrieval model. It allows for operations such as query routing and segmentation, leading to improved retrieval performance. Pre-retrieval QPP methods are oblivious to the performance of the retrieval model as they predict query diff...

Studying online requires well-developed self-regulated learning skills to properly manage one’s learning strategies. Learning analytics research has proposed novel methods for extracting theoretically meaningful learning strategies from trace data originating from formal learning settings (online, blended, or flipped classroom). Thus identified str...

Network analysis has become a major approach for analysing social learning, used to capture learner positioning in online forum networks. LA research investigated the association between positioning in forum networks with academic performance and discourse quality, the latter two serving as proxies for learning. However, the research findings have...

Specificity is the level of detail at which a given term is represented. Existing approaches to estimating term specificity are primarily dependent on corpus-level frequency statistics. In this work, we explore how neural embeddings can be used to define corpus-independent specificity metrics. Particularly, we propose to measure term specificity ba...

The ever increasing presence of online social networks in users’ daily lives has led to the interplay between users’ online and offline activities. There have already been several works that have studied the impact of users’ online activities on their offline behavior, e.g., the impact of interaction with friends on an exercise social network on th...

Research in learning analytics proposed different computational techniques to detect learning tactics and strategies adopted by learners in digital environments through the analysis of students’ trace data. While many promising insights have been produced, there has been much less understanding about how and to what extent different data analytic a...

This paper aims to explore time management strategies followed by students in a flipped classroom through the analysis of trace data. Specifically, an exploratory study was conducted on the dataset collected in three consecutive offerings of an undergraduate computer engineering course ( N = 1,134). Trace data about activities were initially coded...

Research in learning analytics proposed different computational techniques to detect learning tactics and strategies adopted by learners in digital environments through the analysis of students’ trace data. While many promising insights have been produced, there has been much less understanding about how and to what extent different data analytic a...

This paper reports the findings of a study that proposed a novel learning analytic methodology that combines process mining with cluster analysis to study time management in the context of blended and online learning. The study was conducted with first-year students (N = 241) who were enrolled in blended learning of a health science course. The stu...

Learning in digitally connected, computer-mediated settings represents a complex, multidimensional process. This complexity calls for a comprehensive analytical approach that would allow for understanding of various dimensions of learner generated discourse and the structure of the underlying social interactions. Current research, however, primaril...

The use of learning trace data together with various analytical methods has proven successful in detecting patterns in learning behaviour, identifying student profiles, and clustering learning resources. However, interpretation of the findings is often difficult and uncertain due to a lack of contextual data (e.g., data on student motivation, emoti...

Learning analytics has the potential to detect and explain characteristics of learning strategies through analysis of trace data and communicate the findings via feedback. However, the role of learning analytics-based feedback in selection and regulation of learning strategies is still insufficiently explored and understood. This research aims to e...

Flipped classroom (FC) is an active learning design requiring students to complete assigned pre-class learning activities in preparation for face-to-face sessions. Students’ timely, regular, and productive engagement with the pre-class activities is considered critical for the success of the overall FC design, as these activities serve to prepare s...

Learning design in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) intends to promote creativity, autonomy and social networked learning, amongst other things. Students in a MOOC are required to self-regulate their learning to properly self-monitor their learning process and effectiveness of the adopted learning strategies. This paper presents the results of a...

This article presents a systematic approach to defining, applying, evaluating, refining, and revising metrics for students’ soft skills—their abilities like critical thinking, problem solving, leadership and responsibility, communication, and collaboration. The importance of these skills in educational and work settings is growing rapidly. While su...

The success of the flipped classroom (FC) is effectively reliant on the level of student engagement with the preparatory activities prior to attending face-to-face teaching sessions. Information about the nature and level of student engagement with these activities can help instructors make informed decisions regarding how to best support student l...

Objective: The goal of this work is to map Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) concepts to DBpedia resources using widely accepted ontology relations from the Simple Knowledge Organization System (skos:exactMatch, skos:closeMatch) and from the Resource Description Framework Schema (rdfs:seeAlso), as a result of which a complete mapping from UML...

Research into self-regulated learning has traditionally relied upon self-reported data. While there is a rich body of literaturethat has extracted invaluable information from such sources, it suffers from a number of shortcomings. For instance, it has been shownthat surveys often provide insight into students’ perceptions about learning rather than...

There is little debate regarding the importance of student feedback for improving the learning process. However, there remain significant workload barriers for instructors that impede their capacity to provide timely and meaningful feedback. The increasing role technology is playing in the education space may provide novel solutions to this impedim...

The abundance and unstructured nature of biomedical texts, be it clinical or research content, impose significant challenges for the effective and efficient use of information and knowledge stored in such texts. Annotation of biomedical documents with machine intelligible semantics facilitates advanced, semantics-based text management, curation, in...

The rapid growth of blended and online learning models in higher education has resulted in a parallel increase in the use of audiovisual resources among students and teachers. Despit e the heavy adoption of video resources, there have been few studies investigating their effect on learning processes and even less so in the context of academic devel...

The use of analytic methods for extracting learning strategies from trace data has attracted considerable attention in the literature. However, there is a paucity of research examining any association between learning strategies extracted from trace data and responses to well-established self-report instruments and performance scores. This paper fo...

Well‐developed programming (technical) skills are very important for software engineers, information systems engineers and programmers in general. However, they must also possess relevant personal skills (soft skills) to be successful at the workplace (eg, collaboration, solving real‐world problems and communication). The latter, however, are rarel...

Recently, both researchers and practitioners have explored the possibility of semantically annotating large and continuously evolving collections of biomedical texts such as research papers, medical reports, and physician notes in order to enable their efficient and effective management and use in clinical practice or research laboratories. Such an...

Semantic relatedness (SR) is a form of measurement that quantitatively identifies the relationship between two words or concepts based on the similarity or closeness of their meaning. In the recent years, there have been noteworthy efforts to compute SR between pairs of words or concepts by exploiting various knowledge resources such as linguistica...

This first issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics in 2017 features a special section of invited papers from the recent Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference (LAK'16). The theme of the conference, and this special section, relates to the need for Learning Analytics research to challenge our methodological and theoretical assumptions and bu...

Learning analytics research has often been touted as a means to address concerns regarding student retention outcomes. However, few research studies to date, have examined the impact of the implemented intervention strategies designed to address such retention challenges. Moreover, the methodological rigor of some of the existing studies has been c...

This chapter presents the IntelLEO solution that was developed in order to provide a new paradigm, namely, Intelligent Learning Extended Organization (IntelLEO). IntelLEO leverages intelligent technologies to support learning and knowledge-building (LKB) activities of a community that emerges as a temporal integration of two or more different busin...

This issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics features seven research papers, complemented by a practitioner research paper (Dvorak & Jia). Papers by McCoy and Shih, and Knight, Brozina, and Novoselich discuss the important topic of educators working with educational data, alongside (in the latter paper) student perspectives on learning analytics...

This issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics features three special sections that look into topics of learning analytics for 21 st century skills, multimodal learning analytics, and sharing of datasets for learning analytics. The issue also features a paper that looks at models for early detection of students at risk in tertiary education. The e...

Today's online retailers face many challenges, some of which are related to the efficient and effective integration, use, and maintenance of product and customer data. Technologies that make e-commerce data machine-comprehensible could help to overcome e-commerce data management challenges. Here, the authors look into the intersection of Semantic W...

In the multitude of available badging platforms, it is not easy to choose the appropriate one to support a particular badging (sub-)system. A list of badging features provided for a certain platform is often not informative enough and might even be misleading. To address this problem, this chapter provides a deeper insight into current features of...

The pervasive collection of data has opened the possibility for educational institutions to use analytics methods to improve the quality of the student experience. However, the adoption of these methods faces multiple challenges particularly at the course level where instructors and students would derive the most benefit from the use of analytics a...

This issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics features a special section on ethics and privacy that is guest edited by a team of researchers involved in the European Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) project. The issue also features a paper that looks at the use of new methods for the measurement of self-regulated learning. This editor...

In order to facilitate interaction in computer-mediated communication and enrich user experience in general, we introduce a novel textual emotion visualization approach, grounded in generative art and evocative visuals. The approach is centered on the idea that affective computer systems should be able to relate to, communicate, and evoke human emo...

The Linked Open Data (LOD) initiative relies heavily on the interconnections between different open RDF datasets where RDF links are used to connect resources. There has already been substantial research on identifying identity links between resources from different datasets, a process that is often referred to as co-reference resolution. These tec...

The concept of social goals refers to organizational goals that are defined in an open and transparent manner; they serve as social objects that incite both formal and informal collaboration around shared interests/objectives. Our objective is to facilitate the comprehension of social goals and examine the role of social goals as scaffolds of socia...

Open Badges (OBs) have evolved as novel means of recognizing and credentialing skills/competences (either hard or soft skills) acquired in various learning settings (formal or informal, online or traditional classroom). In addition, they offer new ways of motivating learners and scaffolding the learning process, while also promoting values such as...

Websites offering daily deal offers have received widespread attention from the end-users. The objective of such Websites is to provide time limited discounts on goods and services in the hope of enticing more customers to purchase such goods or services. The success of daily deal Websites has given rise to meta-level daily deal aggregator services...

Creating meaning from a wide variety of available information and being able to choose what to learn are highly relevant skills for learning in a connectivist setting. In this work, various approaches have been utilized to gain insights into learning processes occurring within a network of learners and understand the factors that shape learners' in...

Open digital badges are Web-enabled tokens of learning and accomplishment. Unlike traditional grades, certificates, and transcripts, badges include specific claims about learning accomplishments and detailed evidence in support of those claims. Considering the richness of data associated with Open Badges, it is reasonable to expect a very powerful...

Context User stories have become widely accepted in agile software development. Consequently, a great number of software tools that provide, inter alia, support for practices based on user stories have emerged in recent years. These tools may have different features and focus in terms of support for agile RE (Requirements Engineering) concepts and...

This paper presents the service-oriented development of Content and Knowledge Provision tool, one of the core services developed within IntelLEO, an FP7 project in the area of technology-enhanced learning. The project aims at enhancing cross-organizational Learning and Knowledge Building practices at the workplace. Content and Knowledge Provision t...

The paper presents how the concept and technology of Open Badges are applied in the GRASS project for acknowledging, grading, awarding and recognizing learners' efforts and achievements in developing their soft skills (like self-regulation, leadership, collaboration, skilled communication, problem solving and innovation). Specifically, the paper de...

Motivated by a continually increasing demand for applications that depend on machine comprehension of text-based content, researchers in both academia and industry have developed innovative solutions for automated information extraction from text. In this article, the authors focus on a subset of such tools--semantic taggers--that not only extract...

This paper presents the concept and the implementation of the Content and/or Knowledge Provision (CKP) service. The service is developed as a part of research within Intelligent Learning Extended Organization, an 7th Framework Program for R&D project in the area of technology-enhanced learning. The project aimed at enhancing cross-organizational Le...

The paper looks at the increasingly popular concept of Open Badges (OBs) and the technology that supports it, and provides several insights that might help researchers and practitioners decide on how to make the best use of OBs in specific educational settings. In spite of the current big hype around OBs among practitioners, academic literature on...

This report is centered on the emerging concept and technology of Open Badges (OBs) that are offering novel means and practices of motivating, scaffolding, recognizing, and credentialing learning. OBs are closely associated with values such as openness and learners’ agency, participatory learning and peer-learning communities. This report points to...

Aiming to facilitate and support online learning practices, TEL researchers and practitioners have been increasingly focused on the design and use of Web-based Personal Learning Environments (PLE). A PLE is a set of services selected and customized by students. Among these services, resource (either digital or human) recommendation is a crucial one...

Online human textual interaction often carries important emotional meanings inaccessible to computers. We propose an approach to textual emotion recognition in the context of computer-mediated communication. The proposed recognition approach works at the sentence level and uses the standard Ekman emotion classification. It is grounded in a refined...

One of the most important prerequisites for achieving the Semantic Web vision is semantic annotation of data/resources. Semantic annotation enriches unstructured and/or semistructured content with a context that is further linked to the structured domain-specific knowledge. In particular, ontologybased semantic annotators enable the selection of a...

Today's students, being used to constant activity and multitasking in their everyday life, need a high level of social and creative engagement in order to learn; for them, highly interactive learning environments which allow for communica-tion, collaboration, and authoring, are a must. In addition, modern learning theories stress the importance of...