Visualizing eTextbook Study Sessions

OpenDSA is an online platform that allows professors to create e-Textbooks with fundamental CS courses. Our project seeks to enhance OpenDSA by providing instructors with a user-friendly web interface and visualization tool. This tool allows them to understand student interactions during study sessions, in the areas of: Reading, Visualizations, and Exercises. The tool could lead to improvements in a student’s learning process. OpenDSA is heavily used at Virginia Tech and other universities for CS courses. It records student interactions with learning materials but doesn’t have an efficient way for instructors to understand these interactions. Our project tackles this issue by developing a web interface that visualizes student interactions. We expand upon past research by sorting interactions into Reading, Visualizations, and Exercises, displaying detailed study session data. These visualizations will give insight into whether students are active learners or credit-seekers.