Tanya Elias

Hi everyone,

After our look at the semantic web and future possibilities, week 4 of LAK11 takes a turns back practical application of analytics in current learning environments.

I've started compiling a list of tools and their potential uses in the LAK Tools wiki and encourage everyone to add tools and suggestions for their use to the wiki.

If you have ideas for the application of LAK but are unaware of a tool that can make it happen, add that as well. Maybe someone else will be able to point you to a tool that can help.

You might also try using some of the tools and add comments about what you liked/ didn't like about them. (Or write out some instructions for using some of these tools, for the technologically challenged in the group )

I listened to Dragon Gasevic's talk with interest and then I tried to follow George, Dave and Jon's conversation as they discussed it on Friday.

And then I tried really hard to get through some of the course readings and videos on the idea.

One of the examples was Fido. Using the semantic web, you would code "Fido" as a dog and then a dog as a type of animal, which would eventually help computers sort out the difference between references to "Fido the dog" from "Fido the phone" (if they are even still out there).

So here are the things I just don't get:

1. Who puts all of that information in there?

Me? If I write the sentence "Fido barked." I know I'm talking about a dog (and hopefully so will anyone reading it.) Will I really take the time to add the info to code for the semantic web? I'm time challenged already, and if I'm mostly writing for myself and people who know me, why would I spend my time to tag it?

My computer? If my computer can guess for me, then it is often going to get it wrong and what's the point?

2. What if I want to write something with multiple meanings? If I'm complaining about my cell phone that would stop ringing and, "I wish Fido would just quit barking." Again I know I'm comparing my phone to a dog (hopefully the people I'm writing for will to), but my computer? not so sure it'll "get" the reference without a lot of effort and work. And again, why bother?

Whenever we start talking about "teaching computers," I start to get confused. I love the way computers enable us to connect with one another, they are excellent tools. In terms of analytics, Computers do some things very well: gather data, remember stuff, calculate and crunch data - Syntax-related stuff.

People tend to do other things well: thinking, analyzing, sorting and determining - sematics-related stuff.

I may simply be out in left field, but it seems to me that people spending a whole lot of time and effort developing a syntax that enables people to code semantics in a simple enough way for a computer to understand really has both the people and the machines playing to their weaknesses - in my experience not usually a recipe for a successful outcome.

I'd love to hear from people who diagree... Maybe that'll help me "get it"!

I am reposting this info here because apparently the pics weren't visible in its previous location. (Have I mentioned that I'm technologically challenged?)

John Fritz did an excellent job yesterday starting off the conversation about learning analytics. One of the things he talked about was the need to better use existing LMS data and to share that data with others.

His talk prompted me to do some digging into the data currently available from the LAK11 Moodle site and to re-present it back to the larger group. I found out that there are:

233 members of the Moodle course representing 42 countries. The most heavily represented countries are the US, Canada and Australia. There are also two participants from Iran and 1 from Guyana.

121 of the 233 registered members have visited the Week 1 Forums. The most views by a single participant in that section? 54. It also told me that there were more views by guests than logged in members. 53 people have posted to the Week 1 forum in the last day, and only 19 registered members didn't post at least once to the introductions forum.

The overall activity thus far in the course looks like this:

Looks impressive doesn't it? It looks to me like there were over 3200 views on the site, and the number of views is continuing to climb. That's good right? But if we take a look at the next one, the number of posts, it is starting to fall...Is that bad? Are all types of activity created equal or is posting a "better" indicator of involvement?

The Moodle stats also showed me a pretty graph showing that I was really active on the site between 8 and 9 pm (while I was compiling these numbers).

It also told me that Dave Cormier has yet to view the Week 1 forums as a logged in user.

But anyone who checks out Dave's blog will quickly see that he has completed both the readings and the acitvities for week 1. He either accessed the information another way, or as a Guest. In this case, although the numbers make it appear that I've been more active, much of my time has been spent playing around while Dave has been interacting with both the content and other participants via his blog and email.

Although interesting, numbers (data) have their limits. Figuring out how to interpret them and use them effectively, that's where the fun stuff really begins.

(Edited by Sylvia Currie - original submission Friday, 14 January 2011, 01:16 PM -- added images)

Hi everyone,

Apparently I'm a little slow getting going! It's great to see so many people already in here, a few names that I recognize and a lot that I don't.

I live in Kamloops, BC and am currently work as an instructional designer for Convergys Customer Management (a very data-rich environment) and am also a student and research assistant at Athabasca University.

Over the past little while I've started looking at the field of analytics in more detail.

A couple of analytics-related questions rolling around in my head right now are:
How can we measure/use data to improve learning quality?
How can we measure how much our instruction/learning improving performance/understanding?
How can gaps in performance/understanding be used to dtermine what we should (and/or might like to) learn?

Did I mention, I'm usually better at asking questions than answering them

Throughout this course, I'll be very happy to listen, learn and help out in any way that I can. I look forward to discussing and sharing with you all.