Group items tagged

Dissects how a digital scholar might construct "a networked research cycle" (planning, collecting data, analyze, reflect); themes which will have increasing relevance "whether it is because they become accepted practice or because the research community reacts against them." Granularity (e.g., iTunes vs music industry's album) Pushback from outlets (e.g., open blog vs scholarly publication - shift from output to focus on ongoing activity, engagement and reputation - more difficult to measure and reward) Crowdsourcing (inc. layers of filter and publication) Light connections and nodes (sharing in "a frictionless manner") Rapid innovation "These emerging themes sit less comfortably alongside existing practices and can be seen as a more radical shift in research practice. A combination of the two is undoubtedly the best way to proceed, but the danger exists of a schism opening up between those who embrace new approaches and those who reject them, with a resultant entrenchment to extremes on both sides. This can be avoided in part by the acknowledgement and reward of new forms of scholarship..."

Status of UCF (2nd largest univ in the US) blended learning and online learning systemic approach for quality to assure improvement - faculty development is required; social-constructivist paradigm and faculty engaged in action research; measure "student success" via grades earned A,B,C and blended does better with web-based or video-based; withdrawal and satisfaction rates nearly the same as f2f tho video has slightly higher; online learning benefits for students = convenience, reduced logistical demands, increased flexibility, information fluency; for faculty = professional devt, flexibility, teaching/research support; UCF expanded capacity, ability to serve students anywhere, buffers competition; online learning costs a little more but provides capacity equivalent to >$64M of classroom construction (which would have an annual operating cost of $4.1M = cost avoidance model), more efficient use of existing CR space, growth with quality

Learning analytics different from big data in "their concern for providing value to teachers and learners (p14)" Research challenges needing to be addressed to achieve ideal scenarios of use: - Develop expertise in the provision of formative feedback and analytics - Develop methods of presenting analytics and visualizing data that are easy to use and understand - Adopt standards for the structure and export of data - Adopt standards for the structure and export of data - Broaden the focus to include not only higher education in formal settings, but also schools, workplace learning, informal learning and lifelong learning - Identify and address the issues around ethics, privacy and ownership of data (p13-14) ABSTRACT: "Learning analytics is a significant area of technology‐enhanced learning that has emerged during the last decade. This review of the field begins with an examination of the technological, educational and political factors that have driven the development of analytics in educational settings. It goes on to chart the emergence of learning analytics, including their origins in the 20th century, the development of data-driven analytics, the rise of learning-focused perspectives and the influence of national economic concerns. It next focuses on the relationships between learning analytics, educational data mining and academic analytics. Finally, it sets out the current state of learning analytics research, and identifies a series of future challenges."

This paper explores the impact of communication media and the Internet on connectivity between people. Results from a series of social network studies of media use are used as background for exploration of these impacts. These studies explored the use of all available media among members of an academic research group and among distance learners. Asking about media use as well as about the strength of the tie between communicating pairs revealed that those more strongly tied used more media to communicate than weak ties, and that media use within groups conformed to a unidimensional scale, showing a configuration of different tiers of media use supporting social networks of different ties strengths. These results lead to a number of implications regarding media and Internet connectivity, including: how media use can be added to characteristics of social network ties; how introducing a medium can create latent tie connectivity among group members that provides the technical means for activating weak ties, and also how a change in a medium can disrupt existing weak tie networks; how the tiers of media use also suggest that certain media support different kinds of information flow; and the importance of organization-level decisions about what media to provide and promote. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for Internet effects.

See also infographic at Inside Higher Ed review of the report: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/10/educause-survey-finds-rise-use-and-demand-classroom-technology

Good resource - Prof Altbach has been in the HE discussion game for a long time (week 1 readings included a paper he did for a UNESCO conf)

Nov. 1: A webinar of possible interest from the Chairman of Intel.

referred to in EdFuture.net webinar by Simon Buckingham Shum, Associate Director (Technology), Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, UK - uses student data generated from LMS (inc Bb and Moodle) discussion forums reinterpreted into a network diagram Can visually depict - disconnected (at risk) students - key information brokers within a class - potentially high and low performing students so to plan interventions before deadline for grading - before/after snapshots to indicate impact of intervention - student reflection/benchmarking in informal self-assessment