'Let's keep it complex': Investigating the Effectiveness of Online Learning Environments for Complex Learning through Learning Analytics

According to the European Commission, a challenge in education is to prepare individuals for varied and unpredictable career paths in the future (Rethinking education, 2012). Learning environments should focus on domain-specific and domain-general competencies (e.g., entrepreneurship, foreign language acquisition, and critical thinking) to deal with ill-structured problems in the learning and workplace context. The present PhD project will focus on online learning environments for complex learning. More particularly, it will focus on (1) the design of the learning environments (e.g., instructional design principles), (2) learner characteristics (e.g., prior knowledge), and (3) the interaction between the former two aspects (e.g., tool use) to explain differences in complex learning acquisition, on the one hand, and to develop adaptive, more effective online learning environments for complex learning, on the other hand.