Content is infrastructure. David Wiley I opened my first post in this series with a statement about courseware and content design: An unbelievable number of words have been written about the technology affordances of courseware—progress indicators, nudges, analytics, adaptive algorithms, and so on. But what seems to have gone completely unnoticed in all this analysis […]
analytics
68% of Statistics Are Meaningless, D2L Edition
Two years ago, I wrote about how D2L’s analytics package looked serious and potentially ground-breaking, but that there were serious architectural issues with the underlying platform that were preventing the product from working properly for customers. Since then, we’ve been looking for signs that the company has dealt with these issues and is ready to […]
The Quotable Justin Reich: MOOC research needs to reboot
Thanks to Audrey Watters I just read a new article in Science Magazine and publicly posted here by Justin Reich, the lead researcher for HarvardX (Harvard’s implementation of edX and associated research team) ((Note that Science Magazine access requires a subscription or purchase or individual article.)). Justin calls out the limitations of current MOOC research that focuses on A/B […]
Learner-Centered Analytics: Example from UW La Crosse MOOC research
Last week I wrote a post What Harvard and MIT could learn from the University of Phoenix about analytics. As a recap, my argument was: Beyond data aggregated over the entire course, the Harvard and MIT edX data provides no insight into learner patterns of behavior over time. Did the discussion forum posts increase or decrease over time, […]
No, I don’t believe that Harvard or MIT are hiding edX data
Since my Sunday post What Harvard and MIT could learn from the University of Phoenix about analytics, there have been a few comments with a common theme about Harvard and MIT perhaps withholding any learner-centered analytics data. As a recap, my argument was: Beyond data aggregated over the entire course, the Harvard and MIT edX […]
What Harvard and MIT could learn from the University of Phoenix about analytics
Last week Harvard and MIT released de-identified data from their edX-based MOOCs. Rather than just produce a summary report, the intent of this release was to open up the data and share it publicly. While it is good to see this approach to Open Data, unfortunately the data set is of limited value, and it actually illustrates […]
New Internet Trends Presentation: Mary Meeker gets education partly right
Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) has released her annual Internet Trends presentation, which has taken on a life of its own. Her data is very useful to see macro trends and the significance of Internet-related technology. Even in the non-education sections, the presentation should be very useful to education. One interesting perspective […]