Web-based learning systems offer researchers the ability to collect and analyze fine-grained educational data on the performance and activity of students, as a basis for better understanding and supporting learning among those students. The availability of this data enables stakeholders to pose a variety of interesting questions, often specifically focused on some subset of students. As a system matures, the number of stakeholders, the number of interesting questions, and the number of relevant sub-populations of students also grow, adding complexity to the data analysis task. In this work, we describe an internal analytics system designed and developed to address this challenge, adding flexibility and scalability. Here we present several examples of typical examples of analysis, discuss a few uncommon but powerful use-cases, and share lessons learned from the first two years of iteratively developing the platform.

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When we set out to design the Active Learning Forum we had three aspirational goals in mind. First, we wanted every student to feel as though he or she is sitting next to the professor. Students are constantly engaged in “fully active learning.” Second, we wanted the technology to disappear. We ensure that the focus is on the interactions and discussion among students and the professor; the technology fades into the background. Third, we wanted to bring the seminar back from the ether. Because we record each class, faculty can provide students with feedback on every class (and vice versa!). Students can see the history of how they do over the course of a semester, a year and eventually their entire time at Minerva. The combined result of meeting these three goals is that we can have seminars that surpass what’s possible in a traditional classroom and create better learning

When we initially created and refined the first-year Cornerstone courses at Minerva, we evolved a set of shared processes, conventions, and templates to support the process of developing lesson plans for active learning. After devoting two full years of curriculum design effort exclusively to these four courses, we faced the challenge of scaling our course development process to simultaneously design a much larger number of upper-division courses. In order to consistently and efficiently create extraordinary active learning experiences, we started to develop a software-based lesson plan authoring tool that would encapsulate and codify our previously-validated templates and processes. This tool, Course Builder, grew to also support the management and iterative improvement of our full curriculum. By the end of its first semester in use, the combined functionality of Course Builder and the Active Learning Forum allowed us to move beyond the need for a Learning Management System entirely. In this chapter, we introduce the Course Builder curriculum design system. We take a close look at how this technology allows us to collaboratively design, systematically coordinate, and iteratively improve on courses and lesson plans built specifically for active learning.