An Electronic Student Observatory

Summary form only given. AESOP (An Electronic Student Observatory Project) is a collection of computer-based data collection tools for instruction and research in computer science education. Our educational environment is one in which 5000 students study independently at a distance, off-line, using software developed for an entry-level, distance education course in computing. Each student is allocated an academic tutor whose job is to support the student by answering queries and by commenting on and grading assignments. Students and tutors interact primarily through e-mail. The aim of the project is to observe these students unobtrusively, electronically, and automatically, and to record the observations in a manner that is useful for both instruction and research. The important objectives for the recorder are that it must create a transcript short enough to be sent via e-mail (by students who pay phone charges), readable both by humans and automated analysis tools, and replayable, so that the student´s session can be reproduced on an observer´s computer. These sometimes conflicting objectives have led to interesting implementation issues, which are discussed in the paper, which also gives a full description of the recorder and associated replayer.