Inside Higher Ed’s Carl Straumsheim has some reporting on the Course Signals data controversy. He was able to get Purdue research scientist Matt Pistilli on record about it. Here is the sum total of the quotes from the article: Pistilli defended the claims about Signals’ ability to increase retention — with the caveat that more […]
Course Signals Effectiveness Data Appears to be Meaningless (and Why You Should Care)
My father likes to say, “If you stick your head in the freezer and your feet in the oven, on average you’ll be comfortable.” Behind this pithy saying is an insight that is a little different from the “three kinds of lies” saying about statistics. It suggests that certain types of analysis produce a false […]
Apereo Foundation Reception at EDUCAUSE Tonight
This is just a quick note on behalf of my friends at the Apereo Foundation to note that their reception will be at 6:30 PM at the Hilton tonight at EDUCAUSE. For some reason, it got left off the program. Details are here. I, unfortunately, will not be able to join, but if you’re interested […]
Announcing e-Literate TV
This week is the week of the big annual EDUCAUSE conference which, among other things, is the world’s largest ed tech fashion show. In the next five days, we will learn that earth tones are the latest style for adaptive personalized learning systems, and that hemlines and license fees are both going way up […]
The IMS’s New “Caliper” Learning Analytics Interoperability Framework Is Deeply Interesting
The IMS has announced the initial public release of something they call Caliper, which they characterize as a learning analytics interoperability framework. But it’s actually much, much more than that. In fact, it represents the functional core of something that my SUNY colleagues and I used to refer to as a Learning Management Operating System […]
e-Literate and Conflicts of Interest
As you may know, Phil and I started a consulting practice in January. Throughout my years of blogging here, I have made it a practice to update readers on how changes in professional life may affect the writing that I (and now we) do on the blog. I don’t believe there is any such thing […]
Digging into the Purdue Course Signals Results
Update: Mike has written another post clarifying the intuitions behind his math. The spectacular Mike Caulfield casts a skeptical eye on the Course Signals data: Only a portion of Purdue’s classes are Course Signals classes, so the chance any course a freshman takes is a Course Signals course can be expressed as a percentage, say 25%. […]