Exploring the relationship between students' online LMS performance and attitudes in an intro physics course

Many educational institutions have adopted a variety of online learning platforms to offer online content. As students use these learning platforms, they leave behind digital footprints. We can construct a better understanding of students' behaviors and practices if we complement this observational clickstream dataset with other data sources -- such as the data obtained from survey instruments. In this project we combine CLASS (Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey)[1] results with the online learning activities on the MITx platform (a modified version of the edX platform[2]) for an on-campus introductory physics course at MIT. CLASS is a validated and popular survey instrument, which probes students' problem-solving sophistication, confidence and their conceptual understanding, among other categories. From the edX platform, we get a detailed record of students' problem-solving efforts, and the use of posted video resources. By combining these datasources and tying them to their overall course performance, we get improved insight into student behavior and motivation that could inform the course-design process and the science of teaching and learning.

[1] Adams W. K.et al., Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 010101 (2006).
[2] https://www.edx.org/