Abstract:

We present a comparative analysis of working adults' and pre-employment students' learning actions to clarify their learning characteristics and differences of the characteristics in workplace e-learning. The pre-employment student means the student who has an appointment to take a job in the next spring. We deal with 8 courses which were open from Oct. 1st, 2012 to Mar. 31st, 2014 in workplace e-learning provided by a vendor, 4 for working adults and another 4 for pre-employment students. Learners were able to attend them during any straight 8 weeks. The courses for working adults have the identical learning contents to the courses for pre-employment students. We analyze the number of learning actions which is measured by the number of screen transitions of learning contents on LMS (Learning Management System). Each course has a final exam, which learners can take at any time. Final learning status, such as successful and unsuccessful, is defined by whether the learner passed the exam or not. We divide learners into two groups by this final learning status. The total number of learning content pages is different by courses. We normalize the number of learning actions by the number of learning content pages, which is referred to as normalized learning actions, and total up the normalized learning actions per 3 hours. We compare the learning actions of 4 types of learners (successful / unsuccessful and working adults / pre-employment students) with t-test. When there are some differences, we compare the learning actions on an hourly basis with t-test. At first, we examine the equality of variances of all pairs with Levene’s test. Then, if the pair has the equal variance, we examine the differences with Student's t-test. If not, we examine the differences with Welch's t-test. As a result, we found there are some differences in learning time between the successful learners and the unsuccessful ones, and between the working adults and the pre-employment students. The successful working adults have significantly more learning actions than the unsuccessful ones between seven and nine, twelve and thirteen, and nineteen and twenty-four. In other words, the successful working adults have more learning actions than the unsuccessful ones in out-of-office hours. In addition, the pre-employment students have significantly more learning actions than the working adults all day except early morning when people would be sleeping. In conclusion, we consider that the working adults and the pre-employment students have different learning characteristics, and the successful learners and the unsuccessful ones also have different characteristics. The differences in learning time is clarified by this comparative analysis. For instance, the successful working adults would learn more than the unsuccessful ones in out-of-office hours. These characteristics would help us estimate the working adults who have high possibilities to be unsuccessful learners, and support in accordingly.

Keywords:

e-learning, Workplace education, Leaning Analytics.