Roman Rietsche

Digitalization triggers a shift in the compositions of skills and knowledge needed for students in their future work life. Hence, higher order thinking skills are becoming more important to solve future challenges. One subclass of these skills, which contributes significantly to communication, collaboration and problem-solving, is the skill of how to argue in a structured, reflective and well-formed way. However, educational organizations face difficulties in providing the boundary conditions necessary to develop this skill, due to increasing student numbers paired with financial constraints. In this short paper, we present the first steps of our design science research project on how to design an adaptive IT-tool that helps students develop their argumentation skill through formative feedback in large-scale lectures. Based on scientific learning theory and user interviews, we propose preliminary requirements and design principles for an adaptive argumentation learning tool. Furthermore, we present a first instantiation of those principles.

The ability of students to self-monitor their learning paths is in demand as never before due to the recent rise of online education formats, which entails less interaction with lecturers. Recent advantages in educational process mining (EPM) offer new opportunities to monitor students’ learning paths by processing log data captured by technology-mediated learning environments. However, current literature falls short on providing user-centered design principles for IT-tools which can monitor learning paths using EPM. Hence, in this paper, we examine how to design a self-monitoring tool that supports students to evaluate their learning paths. Based on theoretical insights of 66 papers and nine user interviews, we propose seven design principles for an IT-tool which facilitates self-monitoring for students based on EPM. Further, we evaluate the design principles with seven potential users. Our results demonstrate a promising approach to help students improve their self-efficacy in their individual learning process using EPM.