Predict or describe? How learning analytics dashboard design influences motivation and statistics anxiety in an online statistics course.

Based on the achievement goal theory, this experimental study explored the influence of predictive and descriptive learning analytics dashboards on graduate students’ motivation and statistics anxiety in an online graduate-level statistics course. Participants were randomly assigned into one of three groups: (a) predictive dashboard, (b) descriptive dashboard, or (c) control (i.e., no dashboard). Measures of motivation and statistical anxiety were collected in the beginning and the end of the semester via the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale. Individual semi-structured interviews were used to understand learners’ perceptions of the course and whether the use of the dashboards influenced the meaning of their learning experiences. Results indicate that, compared to the control group, the predictive dashboard significantly reduced learners’ interpretation anxiety and had an effect on intrinsic goal orientation that depended on learners’ lower or higher initial levels of intrinsic goal orientation. In comparison to the control group, both predictive and descriptive dashboards reduced worth of anxiety (negative attitudes towards statistics) for learners who started the course with higher levels of worth anxiety. Thematic analysis revealed that learners who adopted a more performance-avoidance goal orientation approach demonstrated higher levels of anxiety regardless of the dashboard used.