Learning Analytics

"there is greater inter-disciplinary discussion occurring in analytics than what is generally found in an established domain". A key motivator for my interest. Co-operation is a must.

Data alone isn't the answer. In fact, from a business perspective, the data is still part of problem. Insight is the answer, which is derived from the data.

sharing and communicating

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the BD market. But big data probably deserves a place in overall enterprise IT strategy for generating business insight. Best practices include generating a list of important challenges or questions that the current approach to data does not address. Could big data deliver the answers enterprises are looking for? If so, then it's all about discipline. A disciplined, targeted approach to big data - one focused on answering very specific questions. (my emphasis - I'll get to those later)

My goal with practical learning analytics is to provide access to data in ways that an average teacher, with no special training, can leverage in order to help her students succeed. This is, of course, an extremely tall order

The plan unveiled on Thursday designates money to create a "dashboard"-an interactive, online database-to give students, parents, and legislators access to detailed measures of departments' and colleges' productivity and efficiency. Data on individual professors will probably also be included, although Dr. Cigarroa stressed that each campus would be able to develop its own system of metrics and the details have not yet been worked out

conduct research on behavioural and social network analytics and behavioural experiments so as to discover and harness the laws of information network evolution for networks of people, organisations

Singapore's government has also provided substantial support for the Living Analytics Research Centre. The Centre, a research partnership between Carnegie Mellon and Singapore Management University, "seeks to make Singapore one of the world's premier locations for the development and applied use of real-time consumer and social analytics, as well as one of the world's leading centres for computational social science related R&D and education."

Among the greatest innovations might be the advent of real-time analytics, which allow the processing of information in real time to enable instantaneous decision-making.

One of the less successful experiments seems to be attempts to integrate VLEs, especially Moodle, within MOOCs.(was My experience with LAK11)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropy, and the foundation associated with Pearson, the giant textbook and school technology company, announced a partnership on Wednesday to create online reading and math courses aligned with the new academic standards that some 40 states have adopted in recent months.

According to Eva Tardos, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, the researchers' paper "is more the beginning of research than a definitive result or end product." The researchers' models make several simplifying assumptions - including the number of competitors - that make the math easier but limit their applicability. Nonetheless, "just raising the questions is an important step forward," Tardos says.

"The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) research first identified, then devised a scientifically rigorous way of assessing the essential characteristics of effective lifelong learners." Shared during Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum

"Cohere is a visual tool to create, connect and share Ideas. Back them up with websites. Support or challenge them. Embed them to spread virally. Discover who - literally - connects with your thinking." From Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum

Slides from Feb 18, 2011 web conference Learning Analytics: Notes on the Future Simon Buckingham Shum, Knowledge Media Institute Open University UK

"VizThink is a global community for visual thinkers and communicators who like to get beyond words and believe that visuals can be an effective tool whether you're just trying to work through your ideas or working to get your message across as simply as possible." Shared by Adam Weisblatt during Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum

Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. (Eds.) Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. Springer: Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series. ISBN: 978-1-84800-148-0"