e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Data mining

  • Blackboard Analytics Update

    In my last post, I promised that I would give an update specifically on the state of Blackboard’s learning analytics. Well, here you go. This is a summary of what I learned about their product from a chat with Mark Max, Blackboard’s VP of Learning Analytics and, to a lesser degree, with VP of User Experience Stephanie Weeks. I wrote about Blackboard’s Retention Center product some time ago. That product (or feature set, since it is free in Blackboard) directly competes with Desire2Learn’s Student Success System. This post is more broadly about their Analytics product suite, which is most directly analogous with Desire2Learn’s Insights product, although it is actually much, much broader in scope.

    The short version is this: Blackboard has very solid and reliable technology base from which they are building their learning analytics. It is easily the most mature platform among the LMS providers from that perspective. What they are a little short on is vision. In other words, they are pretty much the mirror image of Desire2Learn.

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  • If you like learning, could I recommend analytics?

    There’s something that drives me a little crazy when I hear about how someone has learned from Netflix, Amazon, Google, etc., and that they’re going to be the Netflix, Amazon, Movie Box or Google of education.  Actually there are a few things.

    There is a natural tendency to want to leverage the work of others.  In the burgeoning space of learning analytics many look to those who have large data sets and algorithms to extract some kind of meaning from those massive stores of information.  We should always be looking to leverage when we can!  This time, though, our takeaways are limited.

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