ALT-C2012 Learning Analytics Symposium
A learning analytics team from OpenU plus Sheila MacNeill from JISC CETIS will host a 60min session at the annual Assoc. for Learning Technology Conference (theme: “a confrontation with reality…”) in September, Manchester. Come along and join the debate!
Confronting Reality… with Big Data & Learning Analytics
Simon Buckingham Shum, Rebecca Ferguson, Naomi Jeffery, Sheila MacNeill, Kevin Mayles, Richard Nurse
10.30-11.30, Thurs 13 Sept. 2012
BACKGROUND
We are experiencing an explosion in the quantity of data available online from archives and live streams. Learning Analytics is concerned with how educational research, and learning platform design, can make more effective use of such data (Long & Siemens, 2011). Improving outcomes through the analysis of data is of interest to researchers, administrators, systems architects, social media developers, educators and learners. Analytics are being held up by some as a way to confront, and tackle, the tough new realities of less money, less attention, and higher accountability for quality of learning.
IDEAS TO BE EXPLORED
Researchers and vendors are building reporting capabilities into tools that provide unprecedented levels of data on learners. This symposium will show what is possible, and what’s coming soon. What objections could possibly be raised to such progress?
However, information infrastructure embodies and shapes worldviews: classification schemes are not only systematic ways to capture and preserve, but also to forget, by virtue of what remains invisible (Bowker & Star, 1999). Learning analytics and recommendation engines are designed with a particular conception of ‘success’, driving the patterns deemed to be evidence of progress, the interventions that are deemed appropriate, the data captured and the rules that fire in software.
This symposium will air some of the critical arguments around the limits of decontextualised data and automated analytics, which often appear reductionist in nature, failing to illuminate higher order learning. There are complex ethical issues around data fusion, and it is not clear to what extent learners are empowered, in contrast to being merely the objects of tracking technology. Educators may also find themselves at the receiving end of a new battery of institutional ‘performance indicators’ that do not reflect what they consider to be authentic learning and teaching.
STRUCTURE OF SESSION
This Symposium will provide the opportunity to hear a series of brief presentations introducing contrasting perspectives, before the debate is opened to all. Speakers from a cross-section of The Open University will describe how we are connecting datasets, analysing student data and prototyping next generation analytics. Complementing this, JISC will present a national capability perspective, with an update on the JISC CETIS ‘landscape analysis’ of the field, which will clarify potential benefits, issues to consider, and help institutions to assess their current capability and possible next steps.
INTENDED OUTCOMES
Participants will catch up with developments in this fast moving field, through exposure to the possibilities of analytics, as well as issues to be alert to.
REFERENCES
Bowker, G. C. and Star, L. S. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999
Long, P., & Siemens, G. (2011). Penetrating the fog: analytics in learning and education. EDUCAUSE Review, 46(5), 31-40
BIOS
Simon Buckingham Shum’s interest is in whether learning analytics can build the transferable learning dispositions and capacities needed to cope with complexity and uncertainty—the only things we can be sure the future holds. His approach is shaped by his research into computational support for social learning, sensemaking, collective intelligence and argument visualization. His background is in Psychology (B.Sc., York), Ergonomics (M.Sc., UCL) and Human-Centred Computing (Ph.D., York). Based at the UK Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, he is Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Media and Associate Director (Technology). He served on the Steering Group for LAK11: 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, is LAK12 Program Co-Chair, a founding and executive member of the Society for Learning Analytics Research, and co-editor of the new journal Learning Analytics.
Rebecca Ferguson is a research fellow in the UK Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology, focused on Educational Futures. She work as research lead on the SocialLearn team, developing and researching initiatives to improve pedagogical understanding of learning in online settings, to design analytics to support the assessment of learning in these settings, and to extend the university’s ability to support learning in an open world.
Naomi Jeffery is a statistician at the Open University. She builds models of the factors influencing student success as part of the University’s processes aimed at enhancing curriculum quality and the student learning experience. In addition she produces diverse management information for colleagues throughout the institution. She is particularly interested in bridging the gap between research advances and supporting practice and also in the visualisation of learning analytics.
Kevin Mayles is a Senior Manager, Learning and Teaching, Open University. Having held a number of roles focused on increasing the use of educational technologies at the Open University for the last year Kevin has lead a strategic learning analytics project aimed at significantly improving the institution’s ability to make use of the data it holds about its students and their engagement with learning systems. This has included making enhancements to the analytics capabilities tied to the university’s VLE, which is based on the Moodle platform.
Richard Nurse is Head of Digital Services Development at the Open University Library. He has been involved with library technology for more than twenty years in both academic and public libraries. Richard was Project Director on the JISC-funded RISE (Recommendations Improve the Search Experience) project that investigated how activity data from user interactions with library resources could be used to drive recommendations. Recently he has been involved with several other JISC-funded projects at the Open University (e.g. TELSTAR, LUCERO, MACON and STELLAR). His current interests include understanding how library activity data can be used both as a management tool to drive service improvement and as a tool to provide users of those services with choices that can improve their study experience.
Sheila MacNeill is currently an Assistant Director with JISC CETIS (one of the JISC Innovations Support Centres). Her work in CETIS centres around developments related to teaching practice e.g. learning design; educational content related specifications; enhancement of VLEs e.g. widgets; digital literacies and learning analytics.
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