Supporting awareness and self-regulation in project-based learning through personalised dashboards

Project-based learning (PBL) enables learners to carry out challenging and authentic projects through investigations. However, PBL is difficult to implement successfully because learners often lack the self-regulation skills required to monitor, reflect, manage and assess their project activities and learning. Furthermore, most learning systems rarely offer possibilities to monitor and reflect on their project and learning processes. Hence, in this paper, we propose a general architecture of project-based learning management system. It enhances learners' reflective processes by supporting them in creating customisable indicators by exploring their traces. We developed an implementation named DDART and conducted an experiment in order to evaluate its usability and perceived utility. We found that this system supports learners to reflect and regulate their activities and learning, even if the indicator creation could be difficult for the novices.