Skip to main content

EDUCAUSE: Learning analytics and business intelligence

Learning analytics and business intelligence were major themes at this year’s EDUCAUSE conference. I attended a couple of sessions to see how other institutions are using these technologies and to learn more about these areas for myself. Our learning technologists are all engaged with these ideas but I personally didn’t know much about it so this was a good opportunity to learn something about it.

John Doove gave a very interesting overview of several small projects funded by SURF, the Dutch equivalent of JISC. These were deliberately experimental, aimed at bringing people together to see what they could do. The results were both varied and neat and will form the basis for further work. This gave me a good overview of the sort of issues that learning analytics can investigate:

  • Project 1 gained insight in the use of Learning objects (e.g. short instructional videos), showing that use of certain materials correlated to successful student outcomes.
  • Project 2 compared course evaluation by students with student performance data.
  • Project 3 researched how students used the LMS. They found that short student sessions corresponded to the successful students, which goes against the evidence from other experiments. So they investigated this and found problems in the UI were holding up some students and interfering with their learning.
  • Project 4 investigated when to roll out a component of the LMS tool in use that everyone already bought but doesn’t use.
  • Project 5 used text mining of student notes in digital textbooks. E.g repeated occurrence of the word “understand” could indicate students not understanding a certain area.
  • Project 6 prototyped a dashboard for students, showing online behaviour in Blackboard.
  • Project 7 investigated learning paths through the curriculum and how these affect student performance. Now developing into a recommender service for students.

The other learning analytics presentation was on an altogether different scale. Three institutions collaborated to build an aggregated data set, containing over 600,000 student-level records, that they could use to analyse and compare outcomes. The talk didn’t really go into details of what they learnt from the data, focussing more on the process of building the data set in the first place.

On the business intelligence side of things, Henry Childers of the University of Arizona gave a thorough and illuminating presentation about their major BI intiative. He showed the amount of effort that had gone into their system and the organisation they used. Their approach was to start with operational data on an area-by-area basis (e.g. student data, finance, research, estates) and then gradually introduce management data and then aim for strategic data. They have a common data governance group, which sounds similar to our own Applications Architecture Governance Group.

I was particularly interested by one of the lessons Henry listed, that a specification-based approach did not work well for designing reports and that they needed a much more iterative and responsive approach. I think this matches our experience too and we should probably adapt the way we develop reports.

There were many other presentations on these issues, particularly on learning analytics. Reports I heard from other delegates suggested that the quality of presentations was rather mixed, so I’m glad that I found at least one good talk on each topic.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Webinar: Powering your business with Cloud Computing

On October 14th, I will be hosting a Grid Computing Now! web seminar on the topic of Cloud Computing. We have lined up two very interesting speakers who are using Cloud now to make businesses work. Ross Cooney had a good technological solution to sell but couldn't make it economic until Cloud Computing allowed him to pay for his computation only when he needed it. He will discuss the instant benefits and long term impact of cloud computing to the development, competitiveness and scalability of your application. Alan Williamson created the BlueDragon Java CFML runtime engine that powers MySpace.com. He advises several businesses and will give an overview of the different types of services available and how to avoid being locked-in to a single supplier. You can register for this event here .

Technology Strategy Board: Information Day, 22nd October

I've been asked to publicise the following event. The Technology Strategy Board has arranged an Information Day for Wednesday 22nd October to outline the various R & D Competitions being planned over the next 9 months. This Information Day will provide delegates with an opportunity to find out about the activities of the Technology Strategy Board and gain an understanding of the application process for Collaborative R&D Competitions as well as find out about other Technology Strategy Board activities. The event, being held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Central Birmingham, will open at 09:30 for a 10:00 start and will close at approximately 16:30; a full agenda will be available shortly. To register for this event please click on the following link and complete the on-line registration form For more information on the Technology Strategy Board please visit their web site

Business Model Canvas

A Business Model Canvas is a tool for mapping the core functions and capabilities of an organisation.  Compared to the Core Diagrams that I described in an earlier post , the business model canvas attempts to present more aspects of the business, starting with the value proposition – a statement of what the organisation offers to its users (in the business world, to its customers).  It shows the activities and resources, as Core Diagrams do, but also shows user relationships & channels, and also benefits and costs.  I’m not aware of any universities that have used this tool but you can find examples from elsewhere on the web. We are considering business model canvases as a tool for mapping the strategic capabilities of units at the University of Edinburgh.  Phil Taylor, our EA contractor, sketched an outline of what a business model canvas might begin to look like for HR: This is only intended to be suggestive: the real canvas would need to result from in-depth discussions abo