Cetis Blogs - expert commentary on educational technology » analytics

On the Question of Validity in Learning Analytics

Adam Cooper — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 16:15:36 +0000

The question of whether or not something works is a basic one to ask when investing time and money in changing practice and in using new technologies. For learning analytics, the moral dimension adds a certain imperative, although there is much that we do by tradition in teaching and learning in spite of questions about efficacy.

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Learning Analytics: not just measuring but engaging students

Li Yuan — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 09:14:56 +0000

Last week, I ran a workshop for the Lace project on “Learning Analytics: seeking answers at a time of big questions?” at the ALT-C14. The workshop was designed to bring together educators, researchers and developers to explore the promises and the pitfalls of using learning analytics in education. A brief introduction to the workshop is available here.

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Reusing Open Resources: Learning in Open Networks for Work, Life and Education

Lorna Campbell — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 10:41:03 +0000

Back in 2003 I contributed a chapter to Allison LIttlejohn’s book Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to E-learning and I’m delighted to say that, together with co-authors Sheila MacNeill and Martin Hawksey, I have another paper in the subsequent book in this series Reusing Open Resources: Learning in Open Networks for Work, Life and Education edited by Allison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler.

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More Data Doesn’t Always Lead to Better Choices – Lessons for Analytics Initiatives

Adam Cooper — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:41:47 +0000

An article appeared in the Times Higher Education online magazine recently (April 3, 2014) under the heading “More data can lead to poor student choices, Hefce [Higher Education Funding Council for England] learns”. The article was not about learning analytics, but about the data provided to prospective students with the aim of supporting their choice of Higher Education provider (HEp). The data is accessible via the Unistats web site, and includes various statistics on the cost of living, fees, student satisfaction, teaching hours, and employment prospects. In principle, this sounds like a good idea; I believe students are genuinely interested in these aspects, and the government and funding council see the provision of this information as a means of driving performance up and costs down. So, although this is not about learning analytics, there are several features in common: the stakeholders involved, the idea of choice informed by statistics, and the idea of shifting a cost-benefit balance for identified measures of interest.

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Learning Analytics Interoperability – The Big Picture in Brief

Adam Cooper — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 18:52:43 +0000

Learning Analytics is now moving from being a research interest to a wider community who seek to apply it in practice. As this happens, the challenge of efficiently and reliably moving data between systems becomes of vital practical importance. System interoperability can reduce this challenge in principle, but deciding where to drill down into the details will be easier with a view of the “big picture”.

Part of my contribution to the Learning Analytics Community Exchange (LACE) project is a short briefing on the topic of learning analytics and interoperability (PDF, 890k). This introductory briefing, which is aimed at non-technical readers who are concerned with developing plans for sustainable practical learning analytics, describes some of the motivations for better interoperability and outlines the range of situations in which standards or other technical specifications can help to realise these benefits.

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