Abstract:

Since the recent emergence of Sars-CoV2 virus, the whole academic community shifted dramatically towards online, distance or blended type learning. This has meant that academics and teachers have had to learn new pedagogic and technologically enhanced learning techniques in a short space of time. Moreover, it has led to an increased reliance on remote learning tools and virtual learning environments (VLEs). Of primary concern over the past few years has been the desire to monitor and measure the apparent engagement of students with the new electronic material, especially in the HE sector. This paper sets out to try and use the built-in functionality of a popular VLE platform (namely Moodle) to quantify - in some sense - user engagement and then correlate this measure with student outcomes. The results in this study show that there is generally a strong correlation for student outcomes versus course completion across three sample modules with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.76, 0.87 and 0.86 respectively. Finally, these results are compared to those drawn from physical in-class attendance versus student outcomes for the same modules, which generally gave a weaker correlation with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.61, 0.85 and 0.46 respectively.

Keywords:

VLE, LMS, Moodle, Engagement, Student Outcomes.