Math Teachers’ In-Class Information Needs and Usage for Effective Design of Classroom Orchestration Tools

Effective design of classroom orchestration tools depends on purposeful collection, analysis, and presentation of learning analytics (LA) to teachers. However, researchers have raised concerns regarding their acceptance and adoption in real classrooms, emphasizing the critical role that teachers can play in their design. To engage teachers in identifying their analytics needs during class time, we conducted classroom observations, interviews, and a focus group with ten grades 3 to 8 math teachers. Our thematic analysis of the data led to findings about teachers’ information needs and usage, which we integrated with existing models of teachers’ sensemaking and decision-making to generate a conceptual model of math teachers’ information needs and usage. Our model captures interconnections across categories of (a) information needs for in-class sensemaking (events, event causes, student profiles) and (b) information usage for in-class decision-making (interventions). We illustrate the connections between different instances of these categories through five case scenarios. Based on our model, we propose strategies for supporting the design of orchestration tools aiming to integrate cross-domain analytics for overall student growth, balance automated assistance and teacher control, and manage information overload for teachers. Our findings offer valuable insights for LA communities in grounding the design of classroom orchestration tools on teachers’ actual needs.