Learning Analytics

Analysis of 1,461 Blackboard courses. D & F students used CMS 47% less than students earning a C or higher. LAK11 http://tinyurl.com/4fp7oyk

Data analytics is shorthand for the method of warehousing, organizing, and interpreting the massive amounts of data accrued by online learning platforms and student information systems - now as elemental to higher education as classrooms and filing cabinets - in hopes of learning more about what makes students successful, then giving instructors (and the platforms themselves) the chance to nudge those students accordingly.

"This study analyzes the outcomes at more than 380 higher education institutions. It looks at what the chosen strategies have accomplished, in what ways institutions use the data they collect, whether institutions are investing more resources in tools that enable them to collect and manipulate management information, and the degree to which information and analysis are being used to support institutional decision making."

"Cohere is a visual tool to create, connect and share Ideas. Back them up with websites. Support or challenge them. Embed them to spread virally. Discover who - literally - connects with your thinking." From Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum

"The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) research first identified, then devised a scientifically rigorous way of assessing the essential characteristics of effective lifelong learners." Shared during Feb 18, 2011 web conference with Simon Buckingham Shum

Singapore's government has also provided substantial support for the Living Analytics Research Centre. The Centre, a research partnership between Carnegie Mellon and Singapore Management University, "seeks to make Singapore one of the world's premier locations for the development and applied use of real-time consumer and social analytics, as well as one of the world's leading centres for computational social science related R&D and education."

A browser extension that stops major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do

Also, "liking" itself is a very limited way of expressing your thoughts on something. You might like pizza, but no anchovis. If you dislike a Pizza Anchovis, what does the system store? On the other hand, some interesting analogies and recommendations can be done with relatively simple like/dislike statements and multiple choice answers.\n\nHunch should incorporate serendipity.

From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly useful

LAK course website.

Life insurers are testing an intensely personal new use for the vast dossiers of data being amassed about Americans: predicting people's longevity.

Last week ReadWriteWeb asked: "Is Linked Data Gaining Acceptance?" Our answer: definitely yes. Projects like DBPedia, a community effort to structure the information from Wikipedia and provide it as Linked Open Data, have come a long way and work really well. For example, you can search for all scientists born in Zürich, Switzerland.

Ah… the semantic web. The saviour of the internet, and the evil empire enforcing its evil standardization upon my freedom. I've always been a little suspicious of this particular topic. Not that I'm opposed to any kind of stardardization, railroads and the lack of standardizations with bank cards at grocery stores come to mind (grrr…) But the semantic web and how data is 'linked' is pretty important to analytics. time to dive in.

The father of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee defines the Semantic Web as "a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines."

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For the past several years, EDUCAUSE publications have described the emergence of two complementary forces: (1) the growth of "academic analytics" in higher education and the knowledge services needed to support seamless sharing and leveraging of contextualized data/information; and (2) the escalating accountability demands that are driving performance measurement and improvement initiatives. These forces converged in the July/August 2007 issue of EDUCAUSE Review, which showcased their potentially transformative impacts on higher education