Visualizing eTextbook Study Sessions Final Report

Abstract

This project aims to implement a web interface to visualize interactions generated from students’ study sessions using OpenDSA content. Our goal is to help instructors conveniently understand how their students learn and interact with OpenDSA and identify areas of improvement in the system to aid the learning process. There is currently a lack of tools available for professors to use to visualize OpenDSA users' learning process. OpenDSA is used by many classes at Virginia Tech as a supplement to student’s learning material. Having these visualization tools would help see if students are engaged in the material, and how they are utilizing the eTextbook. We will be taking the interaction data from a MySQL database. Then, we will be utilizing a modified version of Samnyeong Heo’s python script to convert the raw interaction data to abstract data for visualizations [3]. Next, we will create visualizations using Python libraries such as Numpy, pandas, and more. Finally, we will create a web interface on PowerBI to show our visualizations. The final deliverables of this project include a fully functional web interface and a visualization tool for the interaction data on OpenDSA. We must also create a final report and prepare our presentation to give in front of our class, CS_4624, Multimedia, Hypertext, and Information. We will submit the above to our client Mohammed Farghally and our professor Mohamed Farag. We will be iterating upon our report and presentation as we continue to design and develop our interface and visualizations. We will be including more testing information and our evaluations and analysis of our envisioned system.