Learning Analytics: Institutional & Research Perspectives

With approximately 400,000 students, the University of Phoenix is one of the largest institutions in the United States. A by-product of this large enrollment is a sizeable amount of data. The challenge to the University of Phoenix is to transform those data into useful information, and then get the information into the hands of those who can take appropriate action. Over the last year, one such implementation has been the development of a statistical model to predict whether or not a student will pass a course. The goal is to get this information to academic counselors who may be able to help students succeed before it’s too late. This webinar will go into detail about the behind-the-scenes views of the modeling project.

 

The amount of online and connected learning being done gives us an unprecedented ability to understand the impact of learner behaviors on themselves, their learning, and their peers. The large-scale data collection that is afforded by the broad use of learning technologies offers us the ability to understand education at a scale we’ve never been able to before. This talk will dive into some of the issues around collecting, analyzing, and understanding e-learning activity data.  It will focus on pragmatic issues of concern, balancing interesting research questions with real-world collection and interpretation concerns based on experience in integrating analytics-aware features in online learning environments.

 

Simon will outline the research challenge of developing process-centric learning analytics to help build the transferable capacities needed for real world learning in a complex world, e.g. C21 dispositions for learning-to-learn and critical discourse. Simon is Program Co-Chair of 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics, delivered a recent Ascilite2011 Keynote on learning analytics, and serves on the Executive Committee of the newly founded Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAResearch.org). Simon's research on Learning Analytics: http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/tag/learning-analytics.