Group items tagged

Ampp3d is a data journalism site from The Daily Mirror. It may provide some useful examples of data being presented and analysed, or of data that CM students could represent and reanalyse.

Just published. I really liked this section: "Rather than data-driven-decision making, it seems to me we need a culture of decision-driven data collection-the data are collected only after a clear theory of how they are to be used has been developed, to be certain that they will be usable. The argument I am making here is that for instructional guidance, teachers simply do not need or find useful (and certainly do not want to wait, or to pay, for) the precision that the educational measurement community is used to providing. All this may seem like a counsel of despair, so perhaps it is appropriate to conclude these reflections by saying that I am actually very positive about the role that assessment can have in improving schooling. First, as Haertel points out, often the unit of action is the instructional group rather than the individual student. For this reason, Caroline Wylie and I have been exploring the use of single items that can be embedded in instructional episodes (Wiliam, 2011; Wylie & Wiliam, 2006, 2007). The response of one student to one item is not particularly meaningful, but the response of a class of 30 students to a single item does give the teacher useful information about whether to move on, or to review an instructional episode."

Several angles of interest on this, from our own perspective (as prospective uses of data) and that of our prospective learners

Useful resources - especially the linked slideshare presentation - from Tony Hirst, providing pointers to tools and techniques for making use of learning analytics

"Because students come to the course for many different reasons, course designers should make it easier for learners to meet a variety of objectives. Since many participants in online courses may just want to learn a few new things, we can help them by releasing all course content at the outset of the course and enabling them to search for specific topics of interest. as course designers, we should be paying more attention to creating effective, relevant activities than focusing so heavily on course content. We hypothesize that learners also use activities' instant feedback to help them determine whether they should spend time reviewing the associated content  We also believe that we haven't given enough weight to teaching learners how to evaluate their own work. We plan to keep experimenting with self-evaluation in future courses."

"Because students come to the course for many different reasons, course designers should make it easier for learners to meet a variety of objectives. Since many participants in online courses may just want to learn a few new things, we can help them by releasing all course content at the outset of the course and enabling them to search for specific topics of interest. as course designers, we should be paying more attention to creating effective, relevant activities than focusing so heavily on course content. We hypothesize that learners also use activities' instant feedback to help them determine whether they should spend time reviewing the associated content  We also believe that we haven't given enough weight to teaching learners how to evaluate their own work. We plan to keep experimenting with self-evaluation in future courses."

Nice open approach by Duke University to reporting on the development and running of Duke's first MOOC, with data about costs and operational issues.

US oriented & UK relevant. 50 min talk about inequity in maths learning by Uri Treisman. Data in 36 page PDF of Treisman's slides at http://tinyurl.com/cn85gp6. Keith Devlin writes " This month's column is short, but I am asking you to set aside 51 minutes and 36 seconds to watch the embedded video. It is a recording of the Iris M. Carl Equity Address given on Friday April 19 at this year's NCTM Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. The title of the talk is "Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize" and the speaker is Uri Treisman, professor of mathematics and of public affairs, and director of the Charles A. Dana Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. I was not able to be at NCTM, but on the recommendation of several colleagues, I watched the YouTube video. I simply cannot write a column on mathematics or mathematics education in the same month as Treisman's immensely more important, profound-and powerfully articulated-words became part of mathematics education history. As a community, we now have our own "I have a dream" speech."

Interesting sample of findings from use of analytics in xMOOCs

Definitely worth reading, if only for its excellent diagram.

A big, somewhat breathless, piece in the Scientific American about adaptive learning.

This is the best summary of "what happened between San Jose State University and Udacity". NB the results of an NSF-funded review of the data is due in August.

This free, hour-long webinar, "The Legal Side of MOOCs," will discuss important legal considerations that come into play with MOOCs. How does copyright apply to the delivery of course materials in the MOOC context? What about laws governing accessibility for persons with disabilities? Are there important privacy issues to address? In this webinar, Madelyn Wessel, associate general counsel for the University of Virginia, will discuss the legal landscape pertaining to MOOCS, including course production, data creation, copyright, privacy, and conduct issues.

Seb, are you going to this? It's slap bang in middle of bath time, so difficult for me.

Based on 2010-2011 data, this BIS study (which I've not read) shows that it is not uncommon for adults who have already got, say, Maths GCSE (or equivalent) at Grade C or above to enrol on a numeracy course at a lower level. This probably strengthens our hunch that there are more people "out there" who might gain from CM than would be assumed from the proportion of adults who have already got a Level 2 Maths qualification.

Lots of data here about the UK's comparative numeracy and literacy performance in this just-released OECD report.

The OU's Doug Clow live blogs from today's London University conference.