Learning Analytics

Hilary Mason presents the history of machine learning covering some of the most significant developments taking place over the last two decades, especially the fundamental math and algorithmic tools employed. She also exemplifies how machine learning is used by bit.ly to discover various statistical information about users.

An entity graph of people, places and things, built by a community that loves open data.

Here we've got a classmate PC demo that shows off Richard Beckwith shows off Classmate Assist which supports users seated or standing at the desk or table. This is an example of context aware computing. There are visual sensors that recognize the items on the table and instruct and walk the students through a series of educational tasks. The goal is to support existing curriculum and practices of teachers.

Data is present in all the systems and processes in the world. IBM helps analyze this multitude of information to make intelligent decisions, while enabling business efficiency and adding value to many industries.

In the first commercial application of CeNSE technology, HP and Shell will build a wireless sensing system to acquire high-resolution seismic data. By vastly improving the quality of seismic imaging, the new system will allow Shell to more easily and cost-effectively explore difficult oil and gas reservoirs.

Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods.

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

A short introduction to the semantic web

The comments to the video are also interesting.

Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes. SNA provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships. Management consultants use this methodology with their business clients and call it Organizational Network Analysis [ONA].

A way of using massive amounts of data for medicine and forensics (16 minute video)

The British universities, Oxford and Cambridge included, are under siege from a system of state control that is undermining the one thing upon which their worldwide reputation depends: the caliber of their scholarship. The theories and practices that are driving this assault are mostly American in origin, conceived in American business schools and management consulting firms. They are frequently embedded in intensive management systems that make use of information technology (IT) marketed by corporations such as IBM, Oracle, and SAP. They are then sold to clients such as the UK government and its bureaucracies, including the universities. This alliance between the public and private sector has become a threat to academic freedom in the UK, and a warning to the American academy about how its own freedoms can be threatened.

A data analysis service for the learning science community

We thought it would be useful to propose one possible taxonomy - we call it the Snice* taxonomy - of what a data scientist does, in roughly chronological order: Obtain, Scrub, Explore, Model, and iNterpret (or, if you like, OSEMN, which rhymes with possum).

I've been following developments in intelligent tutoring systems for a while,  and find it interesting to see how researchers are combining artificial intelligence, learning theory, affective computing, and sensor networks to create applications that might prove to be useful and effective.

Kynetx, Inc. is a privately-held Platform as a Service (PaaS) company based in Lehi, Utah. It provides a development platform for context automation that is the first of its kind. The platform uses Kynetx Network Services to supply tools to developers to create context-aware applications that can run on a multitude of devices, including browsers, mobile phones, and desktops.

The first impressions I have of a venture like this are positive but not without hesitation. I won't conceal it from you that it is less the topic of "learning analytics" that's of interest to me (although I am ready to learn something about this too), but the course itself. This is also where my hesitation lies, but we shall talk more about this later in the course.

Along with about 400 or so others world-wide, I've signed up for the LAK11 (Learning and Knowledge Analytics) MOOC run by George Siemens and colleagues at the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University. We're now into week 2, and I think I'm just about getting into the swing of things.

"VizThink is a global community for visual thinkers and communicators who like to get beyond words and believe that visuals can be an effective tool whether you're just trying to work through your ideas or working to get your message across as simply as possible." Shared by Adam Weisblatt during Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum