Course Sentiment Stream

Course Sentiment Stream

Purpose: The Course Sentiment Stream application is to alert instructors of statements made in their course of a negative emotional nature. This could be an argument between students, statements made about assignments, or statements made about instructors in discussion forums. The alerts help to respond and manage emotional situations quickly. Further, a historical profile of statements made in the course is graphed for the instructor. Finally, students are presented with an overall summary of the sentiment in the class to create a conversation about emotional intelligence and to provide some introductory instruction.

Functionality: The Course Sentiment Stream collects student assignment comments, system announcements, discussion board posts (via a custom B2), and Slack discussion posts into a historical stream of statements. It then processes the statements through Amazon Comprehend to determine sentiment of each statement. It sends alerts of negative statements during processing and then reports on historical sentiment data.

Why unique? While the Blackboard Retention Center considers attendance, grades, and other factors in the digital stream of student activity, this application attempts to process emotional charge in the digital record. This provides a way of early detection of students needing assistance and gives a deeper insight into the course to online and classroom faculty.

Project developed in collaboration with the Learning Technology Solutions at the University of Illinois at Chicago.