Purpose

Purpose

The purpose of learning analytics in its most basic description is simple, improve education with practices and techniques that are proven statistically effective.  One of the most frustrating thing for teachers who have been in education for years, is that every couple of years there is a new fad, buzzword, or great idea that will change education forever.  They back this belief with some statistical data that may sound like:

• Improve SAT scores by an average of 7.1 points on the reading section
• Test scores increased by an average of 10%
• Retention of material will increase by 45% with the use of this strategy.

While in some respects some of the educational fads may be effective, all mathematicians understand a basic principle about statistics.  They can be easily manipulated to get the results that you want.  To get quality statistics you can not just pick one data point to analyze.  In order for something to be statistically relevant their must be multiple data points to truly analyze the whole learner.  With proper learning analytics we may finally find a way to reach kids in education that previously were doomed by the system.  The potential impact of learning analytics in schools are:

1.   Help Students Learn
2.   Help teachers teach
3.   Allow policy makers to make more informed decisions, especially concerning financial aspect
4.   Help administrators coach and facilitate the growth of the teachers in a way that would      increase overall education output by the students
5.   Prediction of students requiring mediation and extra support
6.   Improve current courses
7.   Develop new curriculum options

Learning analytics is such a broad topic, but, one essential thing to know is that learning analytics is not a trial and error process in which a new teaching strategy is attempted and then test results are tracked.  That type of data tracking is focusing on a specific variable within the educational setting.  Learning analytics is focused on how a variety of variables within the educational setting affects the holistic educational process, setting, and experience. 

Not Learning Analytics:  How does economic status effects graduation rate?

Learning Analytics:  How can a student and teachers look at data about engagement, note taking, learning style,  and behavior profile to develop a learning system that will predict a favorable outcome for a student.

This can be used by the teachers now in the schooling environment to predict when students need tutoring or remediation.  Such learning management systems such as Schoology already allow teachers to use analytics as a way to analyze how often they are participating in the course, the quality of participation based on time, and how this is effecting the learner in achieving the academic goals set forth by the teacher.  Teachers could collaboratively use learning analytics to quickly identify students that need more help or have the ability to be challenged.

As I move forward in thinking about learning analytics, it would be a great way to show parents evidence on what the students are doing in class.  It could also lead to a new way of assessing students at the end of the marking period, versus a numerical average of all the assignments that were chosen to be graded by the teacher.