Cross-system log file analysis for hypothesis testing

Understanding the effects of different functionality in complex learning environments is one of the key challenges of learning technology research. Particularly for new personal learning environments, which combine a variety of services to offer new educational approaches such comparisons become increasingly important for analysing the effects compared to established learning environments. This paper discusses the use of cross-system log file analysis for enabling the comparison between different logging approaches used either by different PLE components of different systems used in evaluation. In the presented example the results of a cross-system log file analysis are also used for validating the results of other measures as a questionnaire. This kind of validation reduces the gap of self-recognition of activities and opinions of learners, and the actual performed actions within a learning environment. This provides a more detailed picture than subjective evaluation could do alone.