The student activity meter for awareness and self-reflection

Visualization of user actions can be used in Technology Enhanced Learning to increase awareness for learners and teachers and to support self-reflection. In this paper, we present our Student Activity Meter that visualizes learner actions. We present four design iterations and results of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation studies in real-world settings that assess the usability, use and usefulness of different visualizations. Results indicate that our tool is useful for a variety of teacher and learner needs, including awareness of time spent and resource use. Tools like SAM can also be deployed in other settings that require awareness and self-reflection, e.g. in personal informatics and health monitoring, where motivated users will value the flexible mechanisms to analyze trending data.