Crunching the numbers

• Article 9 of 15
• EducationInvestor, September 2012

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | All 3 Pages

However, the challenges of learning analytics may be such that only the largest of companies - or universities - may be able to push it to the next level. The OU has been using some form of learning analytics since its earliest days, building predictive models of its students to see which are the most likely to need assistance. Buckingham Shum says the university uses these not to decide who should be accepted and who should be rejected, but "It gives tutors the head-up alert of who might need support." But the university has progressed beyond that to look at more advanced forms of analytics, looking at what students are doing online, how they gather and make sense of information, what sources of information they go to, how they discuss information online and who makes contributions.

To do this, the OU has had to develop its own tools - as have other major universities such as MIT and Harvard: "There are really no good analytics tools, especially for learning. We want to give tools to students and that's where most of our R&D is: how you build reputation online as a learner or an expert, how to support the development of higher order thinking skills. It's one thing to track who's edited a wiki, that kind of things, which is what you currently get in a dashboard. I'm interested in whether we can we tell if someone is demonstrating more critical thinking, creativity or resilience when things get tough."

As well as this need for R&D to cope with the gap in the market, TextHelp's McCusker says there are challenges that need to be overcome. "In an ideal world, learning analytics goes way beyond test scores and into social networks, peers in the classroom, learning on mobile phone and so on. But to link all those things together, we need universal data standards and there's a long way to go before then." Even within its own technology, that lack of data standards makes it hard for the company to analyse its information effectively, let alone when sharing data, with all the potential ethical problems that might expose. Nevertheless, it's collaborations between organisations that will open up learning analytics' full potential, McCusker believes. "The thing that grows a market is the introduction of standards."

Although such collaborations are rare at the moment, they are happening. Gareth Davies, MD of Frog, is involved in such as a collaboration to add more advanced learning analytics to the company's learning platform. "The next step we see for education is an Amazon-style recommendation service for resources, based on a student's unique profile. This will allow a level of personalisation never seen before in education. Through partnering with organisations such as Google, Microsoft, the Khan Academy, over 10 different MIS systems, Education City, I Am Learning and many more, we will have the data and resource to make all of this happen. By profiling a student based on what they do inside and outside the school, a teacher will know what makes a student tick, what motivates them, how they prefer to learn and how they process information, so they can understand their students better, and teach them in a way they want to be taught."

Academia is also looking at ways to bring about learning analytics standards that are independent of any particular company or companies. "Open Learning Analytics" is a standard mooted by the SoLAR that will incorporate a learning analytics engine, an adaptive content engine, an 'intervention engine' that will provide recommendations and automated support for students, as well as a dashboard and reporting and visualisation tools - all based on open standards. It's very early days for the project, however, but it is looking for industry partners to work with it on these systems.

Despite the ambitions for it, learning analytics is still in its infancy. Many companies are dipping their toes into the water and are offering systems that can include far more insight into student performance and behaviour than many teachers could have gained even a few years ago. But the need among teaching organisations for the full promise of the technology, particularly as online and distance learning and student-teacher ratios increase, is only going to grow and there are companies already working to meet their needs.

Case study: Plymouth University

Plymouth University's BEd course is about to take part in a trial of a new version of Classroom Monitor's student monitoring and assessment tool that is intended for further and higher education institutions. According to Peter Yeomans, a lecturer in education at the university, the institution has been using a form of learning analytics, but "Up until now, it has been quite mechanistic, computerised testing that gives information back, but that judgement is mediated by the machine. Students can do tests and receive feedback, but those are pre-determined judgments by computer, matching where they are to what they need."

But from September, Plymouth is going to trial Classroom Monitor with the 200 students that are on placement on its BEd course. "The aim is to be able to reach into the system of the cohort to find out which parts of the competencies they have to develop have been met by less than 75% and build adjustments into the course for the next year." Traditionally, that part of the analytics has been paper-based and if students have been away from school on placement, the university has only known there's been a problem when teachers have visited them. "They've had to flag it and you have to be quite mean to do that and nobody wanted to do that. But with the system, we can call the report in each week, what progress they've made wherever they are in the country."

In particular, the system will allow teachers at placement schools to enter information about students and how they are progressing, and access information about them as well. With their progress in various areas understood, the system can then recommend additional online learning content to the student. "The student can have a look at what 'good' looks like through videos on the site, extra paperwork and so on, and how they can reach that. It's hard to do this consistently on a weekly basis in terms of manpower." The university has also deployed web analytics technology in the online learning part of the schools' system so that it can see what students are accessing and what they're not. It's hoping in future to use that information to identify what students need and find helpful.

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | All 3 Pages