Credit: Stanford University, MediaX Conference, 2015
Candace Thille, Assistant Professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, is a proponent of open education and her mission is to develop learning environments and data systems that facilitate the transfer of knowledge from learning research into teaching practice and enhance our understanding of human learning as a whole. She is a currently taking a leave of absence to work at Amazon as the company's Director of Learning Science and Engineering. Although she directs her examples to higher education, many key points can be applied to all levels of education: from K-12 as well as in vocational settings.
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Activity #3In the following activity, you will be reflecting on the presentation by Candace Thille. Click on the image to access the activity.
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The global education and learning analytics market size is expected to grow from USD 3.1 billion in 2019 to USD 8.2 billion by 2024, according to the global forecast report by Research and Markets (2019).
Past & Present: Data-Driven InstructionCredit: Illuminate Whiteboard, 2019
Educators have been collecting and using student-generated data ages before the first computer; however, with online platforms and interactive technologies, this data is being accumulated more quickly, efficiently, and vastly. Current learning management systems (LMS), such as Canvas or Moodle, have built-in analytics and/or analytics plugins that can be used to not only describe the learning process but make predictions and prescriptions.
Data-driven instruction has had backlash from some of the education community for "the corporatization of schools" and reducing learning to "discrete skills and behaviour modifications" (Roberts-Mahoney et al., 2015); however, Wolf et al. (2018) argue that "the effective use of data and learning analytics are both critical components of a digital learning strategy to personalize instruction for many more students, especially to increase student achievement in the highest-need schools". Data analytics studies that utilize big data can help identify those most at-risk of dropping out or struggling with the course and provide appropriate motivators and interventions earlier than thought possible. Niemi et al. (2018) argue that "at all levels of education, the door of analytic opportunities is opening wider with broader deployment of data mining approaches to predict performance and persistence, develop student and domain models..." (p.79) and much more, as described by others (e.g., Baker & Yacef, 2009). |
Future: Augmented AnalyticsCredit: Alphaa AI - Tableau Voice AI Data Analyst, 2019
"Augmented analytics is the use of statistical and linguistic technologies to improve data management performance, from data analysis to data sharing and business intelligence. ... in this case, the main focus of augmented analytics stays in its assistive role, where technology does not replace humans, but supports them, enhancing our interpretation capabilities. Data analytics software with augmented analytics makes use of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to understand and interact with data as humans would do but on a large scale." (Wonderflow, 2019)
Augmented analytics is still in its infancy, even in the business world, so it may take a while before the education sector catches on; however, implications for both business and education are great and promising. In the future, more of the data analytics software used in education will include augmented analytics which can be used to speed up daily data analysis and create Citizen Data Scientists (CDS) of our educators. With the support of Artificial Intelligence and advanced analytics software, educators can feel empowered to experiment and tests learning and teaching hypotheses through the design and creation of digital learning environments, without the burden of needing to learn complex programming or statistics. To learn more about what makes Citizen Data Scientists unique in business (and what can be extrapolated to the education sector), have a look at these articles:
Citizen Data Scientist vs Expert Data Scientist Role of Citizen Data Scientist in Today's Business |