Learning analytics provides educators with enriched information for tracking, supporting, and evaluating virtual collaborative activities. Previous studies have demonstrated the suitability of learning analytics for enhancing the monitoring and evaluation of these types of activities. However, there is a lack of research focused on student perceptions of the use of learning analytics. This article focuses on analyzing student satisfaction with the feedback received from teaching staff during asynchronous online discussion activities (i.e., virtual debates) employing learning analytics.

The Open University of Catalonia (UOC) has created a web-based data analysis tool called ADELA, which enables the automatic extraction of data from messages exchanged by students in virtual debates. ADELA calculates a set of metrics within the virtual learning management system based on student interactions during the discussion, both at the group and individual levels. The tool allows for personalized analysis and offers metrics adapted to the unique characteristics of each course (e.g., focusing the analysis on a specific timespan or identifying the most relevant keywords). It also provides customized alerts based on pre-configured settings to identify students at risk or requiring additional support.

We employed ADELA to study the student satisfaction on the use of learning analytics. A total of 44 pilot studies were conducted, 19 of which belonged to control groups with student monitoring without using ADELA, while in the remaining 25 experimental groups, teaching staff utilized our tool. The experimental and control groups included more than 2,000 students in total, shared the same virtual debate activity design, and teaching staff received the same pedagogical training to ensure the validity of the results. The difference lies in the fact that the teaching staff in the experimental groups received all the information provided by the ADELA tool for monitoring, providing feedback, and evaluating student debate activity. To analyze student satisfaction, a mixed research methodology was employed based on an online questionnaire with open and closed-ended questions, asking them about their satisfaction with the feedback received from teaching staff and comparing the experimental and control groups.

In this research, we check if there exists differences between students' development enrolled in these two types of classrooms (control and experimental) in terms of feedback satisfaction and academic performance, despite belonging to studies as diverse as humanities, economics and business, technology, law or social education, among others.

Keywords: Learning Analytics, Collaborative Learning, E-Assessment, Higher Education, Online Discussion.