Abstract
Descriptions of cross-institutional, educational technology development initiatives that emphasise what actually works in real-world classrooms are rare. In this paper, we describe a multiinstitution collaboration that grew from grassroots classroom needs and proved resilient in the face of institutional change. We explain how the initiative came about, how it survived unanticipated change, and how it led to the development of a new open source learning analytics tool for student engagement. We provide some reflections on the first pilot study of the tool and describe future plans. The authors welcome new collaborators and invite interested readers to evaluate and extend the tool for themselves.
Keywords
Educational technology, collaboration, open source software development, student engagement.