The Quantified Student: Using Smartpens and Data Mining to Understand Student Learning and Achievement

Abstract

Dr. Thomas Stahovich gave a keynote in the morning of the first day of the conference. He showed how researchers have long sought to understand the effects of study skills on academic achievement but found no consistent relationship between them. Dr. Stahovich explained that this is due, in part, to the use of research methods that rely on surveys and students’ self-reports of study habits. In his work, he overcomes this limitation by using smartpens and an instrumented document viewer to objectively measure studying. This combination of technology provides a fine-grained view of the learning process not available with conventional assessment methods and enables the use of data mining to examine the relationship between studying and achievement. In his talk he presented novel data mining techniques, as well as the results of several studies that reveal new insights about the relationship between traditional learning activities—completing homework, taking lecture notes, and reading—and performance in introductory engineering courses. Finally, Dr. Stahovich discussed interventions that are based on these insights and are designed to improve student engagement and increase academic achievement. This chapter provides an edited transcription of that keynote. Thank you to David Hoeft for videotaping the sessions.