Exploring Data Mining in Chemistry Education: Building a Web-Based Learning Platform for Learning Analytics

The integration of learning analytics and artificial intelligence methods into education is part of the latest developments and significantly affects chemistry education (research): researchers might face the challenge of collecting and analyzing content-rich data sets involving interdisciplinary approaches from computer science, chemistry, and chemistry education. Developing a learning platform offers a higher degree of freedom compared to using existing Learning Management Systems. This paper presents a step-by-step overview of how we designed and created the web-based learning platform “I ₃Learn”. This concrete example showcases how the content management system WordPress can be utilized to develop an online learning infrastructure that enables the application of learning analytics methods. Our approach allows collection of time-accurate log files concerning individual usage behaviors without programming skills. The step-by-step overview enables chemistry education researchers to set up a customized web-based learning platform and lay the data foundation for learning analytics. The value of the I ₃Learn platform is shown through a compelling use-case scenario involving 580 9th- and 10th-grade learners in German chemistry classrooms. In this scenario, we collected and analyzed half a million log files, and we report exemplary results and insights from the data.