is reaching a state of maturity that enables non-technical people to engage with expertly designed “walk up and use”
I believe this still has quite a long way to go - there are still many assumptions from the designers of technology or systems that the end users have the skills to easily engage and implement
Analytics could disempower learners, making them increasingly reliant on institutions providing them with continuous feedback, rather than developing meta-cognitive and learning-to-learn skills and dispositions.
I believe this is really worth considering carefully - it relates also the 'pull' effect in previous comments. It is also relevant to consider in the context of the author's comments about skills such as creativity, resilience, etc becoming more important as learning skills.
Tutors can use these analytics to reflect on their feedback, and the analytics can also be used to recommend moves towards the types of feedback that students find most useful.
This would be really useful and interesting. The timing of the feedback would be important to track also.
We have also indicated why these factors require new approaches to learning analytics.
Not just new approaches to LA itself, but also approaches on how to more effectively translate and disseminate this approach to those that are not as conversant with the LA but that operate at the coalface of the educational space ie teachers
This implies a need for ongoing analytics that can support the development of dispositions such as creativity and curiosity, collaboration skills and resilience.
I couldn't agree more! And this relates back to previous discussions about 'process' - creativity, curiosity, collaboration, etc are all processes
innovation requires social learning
Not sure what they mean by this? Are they implying that innovation cannot happen without social learning? I would argue that it helps facilitate innovation, but it is not exclusive
There is also a shift away from an institutional perspective towards a focus on the concerns of learners and teachers. The main beneficiaries are no longer considered to be administrators, funders, marketing departments and education authorities, but instead are learners, teachers and faculty membe
The benefits are great, however there is still much work to be done in this area ie how are the complexities and 'jargon' associated with LA translated effectively for the teachers and learners that are not familiar in this space
A social learning analytics perspective offers the possibility of harnessing these methods and understandings in order to provide analytics and representations that can help learners to develop their conversations into reasoned arguments and educational dialogue.
Discourse analysis for educational purposes is extremely interesting and certainly helps make the invisible more visible to the learner. After rendering a learner's outputs more visible, what's the next step - from a pedagogical standpoint? Reflection? Activating the learner's metacognition?
It is succinctly expressed by Seely Brown and Adler (2008) as being “based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions.”
Isn't this because meaning is situated and information doesn't have indexical meaning but is chameleon-like and shifts as a result of the situation and its participants?
An example of this is Gee’s “affinity spaces,” which provide a model for online social learning and were first identified in video gaming environments.
Gee's ideas about "affinity spaces" are interesting for many reasons, but I'm curious how SLA can optimize the learning situation in an affinity space. Is the goal of SLA to funnel learners to affinity spaces that the learner might be interested in participating, or is the goal to optimize a learners participation in an affinity space, or both? I suspect both but I'd be curious to hear about ways these actions are currently being executed with SLA.
n extension of educational opportunities, and a “responsibility to realise a cosmopolitan understanding of universal rights and acting on that understanding to effect a greater sense of community”
This definition of knowledge-age skills reminds me of the articles previous call for social learning analytics to facilitate the expansion of the learner's network.
engaged in social activity, either interacting directly with others (for example, messaging, friending or following), or using platforms in which their activity traces will be experienced by others (for example, publishing, searching, tagging or rating).
In this way, the pedagogical goal (i.e. the process) is facilitate the expansion of a learner's social network and promote engaging with that network.
ignals project at Purdue University
Here's a video explaining Course Signals - it's student-facing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BI9E7qP9jA
pedagogy, theory, learning or teaching (Ferguson, 2012
This article which Buckingham Shum is a contributor is useful. It was published in 2014, a couple years after this article. file:///Users/ryanbartelmay/Downloads/3538-16882-3-PB%20(2).pdf
information pushed to us during spells of formal education towards a more flexible situation in which we pull resources and information to us as we need them
The "push" and "pull" is an interesting concept to me. I wonder how much of the information is "pushed" or "pulled" in recommender systems? How well are learners able to "pull" information that are relevant? Should learners be taught skills to "pull" information in order for them to be successful online social learners?
changes in technology do not necessarily imply changes in pedagog
I agree that advances in technology do not imply changes in pedagogy. Instead, it will expand pedagogical approaches. In order for educators to make informed decisions, educators need to consider pedagogy, content, technology aspects. TPACK framework (http://matt-koehler.com/tpack2/tpack-explained/) suggest that the three aspects work together, and technology is not the only driver.
The focus must be not only on learners, but also on their tools and contexts.
Learners, tools, and context are important for understanding learning! This can be related to Zimmerman's triadic analysis of self-regulated learning: personal, behaviour, and environment. Environmental factors play an important role in how students would regulate their learning.
potentially actionable, behaviours and patterns in the learning environment that signify effective process
What exactly is an effective process? If effective process = effective performance, shouldn't performance be measured to validate the process as effective?
This model is familiar within settings such as schools and universities, but it is less relevant in the context of online social learning, which involves lifelong learners drawing together resources and connections from across the Internet to solve real-life problems, often without access to the support of a skilled teacher or accredited learning institution
While online social learning involves learners using different online resources and connections to solve problems, individuals do contribute to a different extent to the process of problem-solving (prior knowledge or experience). Therefore, in my opinion, there are two layers of performance indicators in online social learning: the group level as well as the individual level. This would perhaps mean that individual performance is not less relevant but just as relevant.
Social media allow for such a middle ground, but only if as teachers we have a clear pedagogy or educational philosophy to guide our choices and use of the technology.
Is this easier said than done? Teacher training seems important to help teachers develop clear pedagogy for technology use. Also, what are clear pedagogies?
learners can be taught the skills needed to become independent learners
What are the skills learners need and how can they be taught? E.g. skills to identify relevant and irrelevant information, self-regulated learning skills?
educational social media use and computer-based learning or online collaborative learning to justify treating social media as a separate medium
The extent of control over learning is an important distinction between social media use in education and online collaborative learning. Social media give learners more control over the content and there are less rules in what can or cannot be done.