I'm one of the facilitators of this course, but more, really, for my experience in open online courses than for my record of research in
learning analytics. I've been a dabbler in the field over the past 18 months and am looking forward to learning more, in a more focused way, over the next few months.
I'm going to consider myself the 'ombud' for the student in this course, particularly for the uninitiated. There are a number of challenges to running this kind of course, and, in particular, the difficulty with running an introduction to a topic filled with experts who all want to talk to each other at an 'expert' level. I'll blog more about this during the course, but feel free to send your concerns and complaints my way.
I'm very interested to know where people are having difficulties or where there are challenges. So fire away.