Effects of a Teacher Dashboard for an Intelligent Tutoring System on Teacher Knowledge, Lesson Planning, Lessons and Student Learning

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) help students learn but often are not designed to support teachers and their practices. A dashboard with analytics about students’ learning processes might help in this regard. However, little research has investigated how dashboards influence teacher practices in the classroom and whether they can help improve student learning. In this paper, we explore how Luna, a dashboard prototype designed for an ITS and used with real data, affects teachers and students. Results from a quasi-experimental classroom study with 5 middle school teachers and 17 classes show that Luna influences what teachers know about their students’ learning in the ITS and that the teachers’ updated knowledge affects the lesson plan they prepare, which in turn guides what they cover in a class session. Results did not confirm that Luna increased student learning. In summary, even though teachers generally know their classes well, a dashboard with analytics from an ITS can still enhance their knowledge about their students and support their classroom practices. The teachers tended to focus primarily on dashboard information about the challenges their students were experiencing. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that demonstrates that a dashboard for an ITS can affect teacher knowledge, decision-making and actions in the classroom.