Improving the efficacy of teacher-facing analytics dashboards for game-based assessment and beyond

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, more academic instruction has been moved to take place online, which has caused a growing demand for dashboards--websites that educators can access to monitor and understand their student's performance. However, there is a glaring lack of research dedicated to creating design principles that effectively meet instructor needs. In this work, I contribute to this field of study by utilizing feedback from teachers to build and evaluate a dashboard prototype for Shadowspect, a game-based geometry assessment, and construct an accompanying set of design recommendations. I conducted a small user study with a local high-school mathematics teacher to assess the potential of the prototype. From this evaluation, I found preliminary evidence that suggests that the design principles that guided the development of the prototype, which emphasized actionability and transparency, were successful in addressing long-existing problems in current dashboards.