Anya Kamenetz has a piece up on NPR about learning analytics, highlighting Purdue’s Course Signals as its centerpiece. She does a good job of introducing the topic to a general audience and raising some relevant ethical questions. But she missed one of the biggest ethical questions surrounding Purdue’s product—namely, that some of its research claims […]
learning analytics
Blackboard’s Perceptis Acquisition Offers Clues into Company’s Strategy
Yesterday Blackboard announced that they acquired Perceptis, a provider of help desk and financial aid support services for colleges and universities. In and of itself, this is not a huge acquisition. Perceptis has 33 clients, offers services that Blackboard was already offering, and has no substantial new technology. But as we approach BbWorld next week, […]
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 e-Literate TV Episode: Adaptive Learning and Learning Analytics
In our latest episode, the penultimate in the pilot series, we explore the topics that are likely to be moving up the curve of the hype cycle this year—adaptive learning and learning analytics. Like many of the topics in the pilot series, we could have made an entire series about this one. (And maybe we […]
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 […]
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 […]