SoLAR Flare Event - Day 1

Learning Analytics Satellite Event

Thursday 29th November

Despite the great crane fire incident which threatened to cause us to have to move our event (being held in the building next door to the crane), we managed to hold the workshops as planned for today. Once they were completed, the Vice-Chancellor of UTS formally opened the conference proceedings. He drew on the successful use of data analytics in the Obama campaign to highlight the great advantages to all sectors in the smarter use of data. Given the challenges higher education is facing, it makes great sense to use these tools to make better use of the resources we have.

First keynote was Rebecca Ferguson, a Research Fellow from the Open University in the UK. Her address was Social Learning Analytics: some approaches. Her introduction included some great comments, such as "Lets not start with what data we can collect, rather, start with what you want to know."

Rebecca commented on our changing environment, and referred to the Shift Happens video - how we prepare students for futures that are largely unknown using technologies that don't exist yet.

She drew on the OU's SocialLearn project  that "gives users an effectual learning space to give users the control of what and how they learn, and with whom, by harnessing the power of the web and the energy of social networking, going beyond the realms of just OU content to the OER content of the world."

Rebecca discussed the range of analytics tools they use to understand how learners navigate that space. The range of approaches was extraordinary and this is a brief summary of each, together with an explanation of how they use the results:

Network Analytics - sheds light on the networks between people and what they are talking about. Are there separate groups talking about the same things but not connected? If so, introduce them

Discourse Analytics - how are people engaging with the ideas of others? Can we teach them other modes of dialogue, because once they learn those different approaches, their performance increases.

Content analytics - automated methods of indexing and filtering online media for learners (see this example) - used to recommend resources to individuals or groups

Disposition analytics - attempts to bring together the leaner's capacities for lifelong learning - eg motivation, experiences etc  - showed an example of ELLI dashboard - looks like a spider diagram that provides a visual representation to the learner of their disposition with recommendations about ways of enhancing particular aspects.

Context analytics - attempts to understand the learning context of individual learners and tailor responses accordingly.

In conclusion she talked about the enormity of this job and asked how we could achieve what we need to? Who else should be involved?

Her slides are available now.

Just when I thought all was going well, I was informed that our venue will be closed tomorrow to enable them to remove the crane - so we do have to move our conference!

Shane Dawson told me not to worry ... he said a crane falls over at every conference :)