Learning Analytics
Impact on Education
So what's up?
For Starters...What is learning analytics?
Educators want to design a software that adapts to the learners educational journey and makes adjustments and suggestions to keep the student motivated as they move on to another level, and have decided to do so through Learning Analytics. Learning Analytics is the use of intelligent data and learner produced data for predicting and advising people’s learning and it offers a way to successfully assess students depending on their knowledge and present personalized programs they might be interested to work in. It will not only advice and support the student, but will also help the teacher improve his/her teaching methods, through data recollections, just like in business analytics.
Furthermore, it is used to enhance student and faculty performance, improve student understanding of course material, assess and attend the needs of struggling learners and allow instructors to assess and develop their own strengths.
Standardized Testing
Student Assessment
Teacher Assessment
Positive Impact on Education
Education has recently taken advantage of Business Analytics to offer students a more personalized experience and i'ts goal is to improve learning outcomes.
The rise of online education and virtual educational environments are making learning analytics a real and helpful tool to improve education. Online education has a lot of benefits as ensure the quality and affordability of education and such impacts can be categorized in the next list.
- Learning Analytics can explore the student’s trajectories through learning resources, and this way could know which resources are more effective for each kind of student.
- It helps groups of students get individual attention and improve at their own rhythm.
- Intelligent tutoring systems that can identify strengths and weaknesses of each student, can be developed with learning analytics to help them have a more effective learning process.
- Individual learners might be benefited because with learning analytics the software there are using reflects their own achievements. The software learns about their strengths and weaknesses ant this way it can show the appropriate way to go and continue the learning process.
- Learning analytics could be a great help in places where staff (teachers) is short.
- Students with special learning needs, who require extra support and attention, can have huge benefits with learning analytics, because the software can identify their specific and individual weaknesses.
- The testing system can also be benefited with learning analytics. Tests could be modified individually for each student, to follow the strengths of each individual and to take advantage of them showing the right path to follow their education.
- Learning analytics supports institutional administrators to take adequate decisions, learning the trends of student’s preferences and needs; and also learning the trends of the labor market requirements.
- It could show the way to new careers, learning from student’s preferences and learning from the changing of the labor world and predicting paths.
- Furthermore, learning analytics helps to suggest new courses or improve current courses at all educational levels based on the interest of the students, helping improve the curriculum.
In addition, it is used, along with Data Mining to reserch and create models that can be used to influence online learning systems in several areas. One of them is use rmodeling, which collects the user's knowledge, behaviour, experience, mptivation and their satisfaction to detect when a student is not going in the right direction and guide them through the correct one. And because this is gathered in real time and because feedback is sent daily to the studnt, weekly to the teacher and monthly to the princial their is an actual chance for the student to laern something. This data can be used to profile users by grouping them with similaar users who have related characteristics and offers experiences to users to help them adapt to how a system performs and makes recomendations.
Current News
"Learning Analytics: Insights into the Natural Learning Behavior of Our Students" by Bernd Becker talks about learning analytics, and discusses three interactive components to be studied when collecting data for learning analytics: timing, location, and population. Current data is very valuable in learning analytics
The Evolution of Big Data and Learning Analytics in American Higher Education" by Anthony Picciano talks about the the big data about analytics in the education system in America. This journal defines basic definitions about learning analytics, and talks about the implications towards this subject. It also talks about the concerns of learning analytics.
Many four year colleges are participating in a "field trial" of learning analytics. The information can help professors find struggling students who are thinking about or trying to drop the class. It can better the students interests, improve learning results and monitor the use of online learning tools. "
"For years, we've sought ways to understand student performance and course effectiveness in our online learning programs," said Kevin O'Halla, chief information officer at Grand Rapids Community College. "Blackboard Analytics for Blackboard Learn gives us greater insight, not just in a static semester-by-semester fashion, but over time, and in real time. While still in the trial, we're already seeing how Grand Rapids can make better decisions about our course delivery to help ensure student success through a tool that is easy for end user analysis."
"The most spectacular example of business use of consumer data is the US chain store Target’s analysis of changes in a customer’s life, e.g. finding out whether or not a customer is pregnant, with the aim to send them coupons for certain products they will need. Internationally, Amazon’s use of real-time recommendations to give users feedback almost instantly and to create a personal shopping experience for each and every customer is well known"
Education is in its early stage in learning analytics. It can track student learning, provide early alerts and interventions to improve retention and operations. Learning Analytics is also used in stores such as Target and Amazon, who use learning analytics to improve their costumers shopping experience.
Bibliography
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- "Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu." Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu. Web. 16 May 2014.
- "7 Things You Should Know About First-Generation Learning Analytics." EDUCAUSE Homepage. Web. 16 May 2014.
- "2013-horizon-report-k12.pdf - Google Drive." NMC Horizon Project, n.d. Web. 08 May 2014. <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_B8yx2i55ryd1J3ZUppU2QzZnM/edit>."Learning Analytics." Educause.edu. Educause, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
- "Business Analytics." Webopedia.com. Webopedia, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
- "Learning Impact Blog." Imsglobal.org. IMS Global Learning Consortium, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
- "Learning Analytics and Technology Enhanced Assessment." Bris.ac.uk. University of Bristol, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
- Siemens, George, and Ryan S.J.d. Baker. "Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics." Columbia.edu. Columbia University and Athabasca University, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
- "Learning Analytics." Wikipedia.com. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.