Learning analytics

Learning analytics is the use of intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and social connections for predicting and advising people's learning.

History
Work in progress: sociologists like Wellman and Watts...and mathematicians like Barabasi and Strogatz. The work of these individuals has provided us with a good sense of the patterns that networks exhibit (small world, power laws), the attributes of connections (in early 70's, Granovetter explored connections from a perspective of tie strength and impact on new information), and the social dimensions of networks (for example, geography still matters in a digital networked world).

Criticism

 * 1) "I somewhat disagree with this definition - it serves well as an introductory concept if we use analytics as a support structure for existing education models. I think learning analytics - at an advanced and integrated implementation - can do away with pre-fab curriculum models". George Siemens, 2010.
 * 2) "In the descriptions of learning analytics we talk about using data to "predict success".  I've struggled with that as I pore over our databases.  I've come to realize there are different views/levels of success." Mike Sharkey 2010.

Methods
Methods for learning analytics include:


 * Social network analysis (SNA) - "the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes. SNA provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships. Management consultants use this methodology with their business clients and call it Organizational Network Analysis [ONA]."


 * Behavioral trust analysis - using instances of conversation and propagation (people communicating and using information to generate new information) as an indicator of trust.


 * Influence and passivity measure - assessing the influence of people and information by measuring the number of times it is passed on, cited, or retweeted.


 * Content analysis


 * Social network analysis


 * Impact of interaction


 * Prediction


 * Personalization & adaptation


 * Intervention

Software
Much of the software that is currently used for learning analytics duplicates functionality of web analytics software, but applies it to learner interactions with content. Social network analysis tools are commonly used to map social connections and discussions (see Social network analysis software).