Using the tool

In a nutshell, the idea of OnTask is to help instructors and designers to use data available about a what is happening in a learning experience to design and deploy personalised learner support actions. This last term, personalised support actions is purposefully vague to include any action that is given to learners in different form depending on some personal conditions. The following figures illustrates an example of how OnTask can help instructors and learners.

Imagine a learning experience in which you want to provide personalised messages to the learners in three instances. In the first week, you want to send a welcome message and change slightly the text based on the type of background. The second week you want to send some comments and suggestions about the participation in the forum but the text will depend on the measures of engagement obtained from the platform. Finally, you want to send a third personalised message depending on the level of engagement with the videos in the course. The main idea of these messages is that you want to change some portions based on the information available in the table.

The main entity in the platform is called a *workflow* and represents a set of data capturing procedures, a table with current data, and a set of actions. The usual steps require first to populate the table with data extracted from the learning environment. In the figure we assume three data sources: the class list (basic information about the learners), data about participation in an online discussion forum, and data about resource usage.

These three sources are combined and stored in the second entity in OnTask: the table. Think of the table as a conventional excel sheet storing the information about the learners (one learner per row and a set of features about each learner as columns).

The third entity in OnTask is the action that is basically a text with elements that can be changed and adapted to each learner depending on the values of the features included in the table. This text can be included in an email, made available through a web page, or forwarded to another system for further processing.

A workflow in OnTask contains a single table and a set of actions. This container is conceived to manage the data and actions related to a learning experience. You may use the workflow shown in the documentation importing the ELON3509 workflow.

The following sections offer a more in-depth description of all these elements as well as examples with real scenarios.

More detail information about the following elements:

• The Workflow
• Workflow Details
  • The Columns
• Data Operations
  • CSV Files
  • Merge Operation
• The Table
• The Actions
  • Actions In
  • Actions Out
• The Logs