Depending on the time of week and mood I'm in, I can generally be found in one of Edmonton, Vancouver or Brighton (UK). I work for Athabasca University as an associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems as well as being a TEKRI member, and I work for the University of Brighton as a senior lecturer in the Centre for Learning and Teaching. While the course is on I'm mostly going to be in Vancouver where I tend to spend as much time as possible (who wouldn't?).
I'm one of the facilitators of this course and I'm interested in the process, the content and, most of all, the people who are involved and who are likely to be involved with the course. I've been skirting around the area of analytics for a decade or so, mainly finding a home for my interests in the adaptive hypermedia community, which says something about where I look for value: it is not enough for me to know what is happening but also to act on it, and that is where some of the biggest and most intractable issues lie. It is hard enough identifying the facets of behaviour and activity that relate to learning but then how do we turn the knowledge of behaviour gleaned from analytics into something that will affect that behaviour in a way that actually improves learning? And what happens when we iterate that? This leads to a range of questions about the nature of crowds, the nature of learning, the effects of interventions, the nature of creativity and a whole load more.
Like any teaching experience I hope to learn more from others than they learn from me, and that the range and diversity of participants will result in something new, creative and wonderful for all concerned. I don't know quite what that will be yet, but that's why it's interesting!