A method of visualizing students’ reactions by creation of a time series cross table from the in class page view history of the Learning Management System

Abstract

Lectures in classrooms reach dozens of students at a time, but the lecturer can find it extremely difficult to gauge students’ individual reactions to the teacher’s instructions and the content being presented. For this paper, about the blended learning that is carried out in the classroom, we conducted a time series analysis by utilizing the viewing times of digital teaching materials that have been stored in the Learning Management System. And we have proposed the creation of a time series cross table to visualize the students' reactions numerically, along with the teacher’s instructions, regarding the browsing of digital teaching materials. The digital teaching materials were created in a PDF file and installed in the Moodle learning management system. We created a time series cross table by utilizing the time of the page view histories collected, and thus we indicate that we could visualize the student’s reaction to the teacher’s instructions indicating a list of transition of values that represents the status of students viewing the digital teaching materials. The students’ reactions when the teacher’s instructions are through, including when materials were opened with a delay, are visualized by a numerical value list on time series cross table. The proposal of the time series cross table indicates parts of teacher instruction that might not be clearly understood; thus, the benefit of its utilization for future class improvement was revealed. This information can serve to improve instructions given to students in future classes.