Week 8: Big Data and Learning Analytics

Thanks for your work on this OER team. Definitely an interesting topic. I am absolutely sold on the integration of teaching, learning and research into a single point of access. This seems to have great potential benefits to all involved although I do fear that education may one day become 'Amazonian' as a result. That is, it is dangerous for one player to have all the chips, particularly when those chips (data) are so powerful in terms of manipulating human behavior. I would like to have had more significant, single point of focus for this OER. I appreciate the effort to speculate on the future of data and analytics in education but I felt like we needed to get a little deeper into what that might look like and how we might be able to integrate that into practice. Also, the activities were a little light. They didn't take much effort or a great deal of thought to be able to complete, once I was able to access, which actually took quite a bit of effort!

Thank you, team! I enjoyed your OER and enjoyed the comparison between Khan Academy and IXL in activity 2. I've heard of Khan academy before. I would say it's pretty popular, but I never actually had a use for it based on my teachable area. However, I never knew about IXL and did some more research after completing activity two. Thanks for sharing! For whatever reason, mentimeter was not working out for me and couldn't really participate in activity 3. I tried a using a different browser, clearing Cache and still nothing. Either way I thought you all shared a lot of useful information in your OER and did a great job! Thanks!

Thank you, Team Big Data! I was able to contribute via the Mentimeter, so something is working properly now. You covered a lot of information in your OER! You did a good job of tackling a lot of information while making it accessible and relevant to even those of us who aren’t in the classroom on a daily basis. For those of us who need more guidance, I would have appreciated a practical checklist or “how to” list of steps to take to ensure privacy and confidentiality when planning new education initiatives (perhaps within the “4 Ways to Protect Students in K-12 Educational Institutions” section.) As MET is helping us to learn to design learning activities, this type of practical information is really welcomed. Thanks again for your efforts!

Thank y'all for a great OER! I wrote this in the final activity, but I'll say it again: even though I was grumbling when I saw the Candice Thille video length, I was enamored with what she had to say and how she said it. It was a true highlight! The mentimeters worked for me - the default length is pretty short on them, and I figure we may need to reset the link on ours to take them through our week.

Hi Team. I missed highlighting another point--the pre and post surveys require us to submit our email addresses. It is a mandatory field without which the form cannot be submitted. Is there a particular reason for collecting the email addresses as part of the survey? Thank you!

Hi Team. I want to say that I knew next to nothing about big data and data analytics, and your presentation has certainly piqued my curiosity. I enjoyed the activities as well as the differentiation between institutional analytics, learning analytics and academic analytics. I also find that, as you have mentioned in your launchpad post, the information can be applied to schools and to corporate training. Being in the latter field, I would surely like to learn more about institutional analytics, learning analytics and the correlation--if any. While I understand that Activity 1: Education Investing in Yourself was meant to give us an initial taste of how deeply embedded data analytics can be in making some very important life decisions, using Tableau was a bit limiting in terms of the interface efficacy. In my opinion, perhaps if you had linked it by embedding the website URL (and by making sure the website opened in a separate tab or window), the navigation would be easier. It would also make sure that all the content was visible.

I wrote my comments in the last Post-Survey question, but for the sake of visibility, let me say again here that I really enjoyed learning about LK and DM in your comprehensive OER. WELL DONE!! I also really liked the way you embedded the Tableau tool and the Mentimeter results (particularly the auto-scrolling one!) I also discovered a new interest in the work of Candace Thille, so THANK YOU for introducing me to her!

Hey Week 8 Team, Carla again. I still can't access the Mentimeter polls, those codes in your screenshots don't appear on my side. So herewith my responses to the two activities: 1. Pasteur, enhanced learning, interface 2. Big data and learning analytics have huge potential for application in my teaching as I am involved in teaching courses with over 900 students enrolled per course. To be able to easily spot questions or areas of work that were particularly troublesome for students in answering can allow me to regroup and refocus the class on what some of their misconceptions might be. I can see myself using this in their weekly online tests (low stakes) and addressing problem areas before larger summative (high stakes) assessments come along.

Hello Amanda, Cassandra and Vivien, Thank you for providing the OER for this week. I expressed my feedback via your post-survey already re: possibly cutting down on videos by priming them to start when the more focused content starts (54:37 worth of video total), but I wanted to add one additional thing related to this: the first video talks of Learning Analytics but it doesn't have a lot of relevant content to justify being ~8 minutes long; something like this (https://youtu.be/Sanf-2JAg1w) is more concise and in my opinion provides a more detailed picture. As Activity 3 was having issues, I'll include my responses here (maybe when that gets figured out, you can add my responses in for me?): Part 1: 3 key phrases from the video: "testing hypotheses", "instant feedback" and "ability to prepare for future learning" Part 2: How I can integrate into my own work: I'm hoping to one day have my classroom much more digital, where students work individually (flipped classroom-esque) using a Learning Management System to learn at their own pace, where I can oversee the whole process and analyze trends in order to know how much time I should be spending certain topics. Just last night I was marking a test where I noticed a trend among students getting a particular question wrong. I know now to spend extra time talking about commission and percentages...had I used a system that analyzed their work before my major assessment, there likely would have been greater success on questions including that concept. Thanks again - definitely and interesting topic and I'm happy you guys covered it in detail.

Hi all, I have just worked my way through your OER and wanted to note that I also could not get the activities in Mentimeter to work. (activity 3) Overall, good job!