From the humanities education standpoint, developing critical reading skills is crucial. One of the essential values of Humanities is identified as critical thinking (Holm et.al. 2015). Especially so in the case of courses that deal with cultural texts including from the field of narrative arts. While understanding subjective experiences embedded in the texts and relating with them are important, deciphering the layered meanings is also equally significant. Developing critical reading skills enable one to do all the above tasks for a much-enriched meaning-making process.

What are our goals?

1. Creating critical reading tasks leveraging affordances of interactive technologies.

2. Sense-making of learning traces of students critical reading activities.

3. Investigating answering strategies in open book exams and developing adaptive feedback for students.

What technology are we using?

Using the Learning and Evidence Analytics Framework (LEAF) we integrate the use of BookRoll e-book reader to support teaching-learning of critical reading activities. The reading logs are collected as standard xAPI statements for further analysis of students behaviours.

Current findings

Characterised Reader behaviours during non-evaluative critical reading tasks. (Majumdar et al. 2021)

Quantified 4 reader profiles: Engaged, Strategic, Wanderers and Check-outs, during critical reading to identify cultural references and performative elements in a play. (Majumdar et al. 2020)

People involved

Dr. Rwitajit Majumdar, Kyoto University, Japan

Dr. Geetha B., BITS Pilani Goa Campus, India

Dr. MeiRong Alice Chen, Taiwan Tech, Taiwan

Dr. Sameer Sahashrabuddhe, EMRC, Pune

Dr. Ramkumar Rajendran, IIT Bombay, India

Dr. Brendan Flanagan, Kyoto University, Japan

Dr. Hiroaki Ogata, Kyoto University, Japan

Mr. Reek Majumdar, Clemson University, USA

Ms. Jiayu Li, Kyoto University, Japan

Related publications

1. Majumdar R., Bakilapadavu G., Majumder R., Mei-Rong C. A., Flanagan B. and Ogata H. (2021) Learning Analytics of Humanities Course: Reader Profiles in Critical Reading Activity. in journal of Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning 16, 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-021-00164-w .

2. Majumdar R., Bakilapadavu G., Li J., Ogata H., Flanagan B. and Chen M. R. A. (2021) Analytics of Open-Book Exams with Interaction Traces in a Humanities Course. accepted in ICCE 2021. (Paper Nominated for Best Overall Paper Award)

3. Majumdar R., Bakilapadavu G., Majumder R., Mei-Rong C. A., Flanagan B. and Ogata H. (2020) Learning Analytics of Critical Reading Activity: Reading Hayavadana during Lockdown. in 28th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE2020), Vol.1, pp.127-136, 2020.11.23

4. Majumdar R., Bakilapadavu G., Rajendran R., Sahasrabuddhe S., Mei-Rong C. A., Flanagan B. and Ogata H. (2020) Learning Analytics for Humanities and Design Education. in 28th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE2020), Vol.2, pp.154-156, 2020.11.23.