Digital Learning Environments for SLA Learning Analytics and the Construction of Knowledge

“The question of where people learn languages is equally as important as that of how they do so” (Benson 2021). The literature offers a great deal of research about online learning but only a little on digital linguistic settings in interaction with learners. Within the instructive spaces, students build their own paths, their own space, and they orient and organize their perceptions and actions; they construct their own knowledge (Damşa et al. 2019: 2078). A better understanding of that can help the teachers to be aware of the way students live and experience the learning platform. The research presented here explores this aspect of language learning settings in virtual world through the observation of Italian as L2 students of the University G.D’Annunzio in classroom and within two different linguistic virtual contexts, an LMS Moodle-based and a CMS WordPress-based where digital resources for Italian as L2 were implemented. The innovative part of the study is usage of a non-pedagogical tracking software, called Matomo, which allows the collection of learning analytics aimed to monitor learner behavior within the settings, giving a clear “picture” of the interaction between students and resources. The results helped to identify learners’ real behavior and how they created their space of knowledge. The overall information can be used to adapt the learning environments to real students’ needs.