The Transition Matrix -- A classification of navigational patterns between LMS course sections

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hildebrandt, Tobias, Mehnen, Lars
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hildebrandt, Tobias
Mehnen, Lars
author_facet Hildebrandt, Tobias
Mehnen, Lars
contents Learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle are increasingly used to support university teaching. As Moodle courses become more complex, incorporating diverse interactive elements, it is important to understand how students navigate through course sections and whether course designs are meeting student needs. While substantial research exists on student usage of individual LMS elements, there is a lack of research on broader navigational patterns between course sections and how these patterns differ across courses. This study analyzes navigational data from 747 courses in the Moodle LMS at a technical university of applied sciences, representing (after filtering) around 4,400 students and 1.8 million logged events. Transition matrices and heat map visualizations are used to identify and quantify common navigational patterns. Findings include that the majority of the analyzed courses exhibit some kind of diagonal pattern, indicating that students typically navigate from the current to the next or previous section.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_13275
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Transition Matrix -- A classification of navigational patterns between LMS course sections
Hildebrandt, Tobias
Mehnen, Lars
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle are increasingly used to support university teaching. As Moodle courses become more complex, incorporating diverse interactive elements, it is important to understand how students navigate through course sections and whether course designs are meeting student needs. While substantial research exists on student usage of individual LMS elements, there is a lack of research on broader navigational patterns between course sections and how these patterns differ across courses. This study analyzes navigational data from 747 courses in the Moodle LMS at a technical university of applied sciences, representing (after filtering) around 4,400 students and 1.8 million logged events. Transition matrices and heat map visualizations are used to identify and quantify common navigational patterns. Findings include that the majority of the analyzed courses exhibit some kind of diagonal pattern, indicating that students typically navigate from the current to the next or previous section.
title The Transition Matrix -- A classification of navigational patterns between LMS course sections
topic Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13275