Higher Ed Lab Notebook 10/3/2012
- Big idea of the day: Data analytics comes to higher education. A few things seem to have changed.
- Scale. The major players are focused on big data analytics. Beyond mere search.
- Personalization. RT delivery of an educational experience tailored to learning styles, needs, learning objectives at the level of the individual learner
- Granularity. Candace Thille (http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/ote/WhoWeAre/index.html) calls it Nano-Scale data collection. Knewton’s Jose Ferreira talks about Atomic Concepts.
- Cannot allow data monopolies. Stovepipes are unacceptable. Open sharing and interchange standards are essential.
- Jose Ferreira: Knewton’s capturing in the hundreds of thousands of data per user per day. We’re capturing what you’re getting right, what you’re getting wrong, what answers you’re falling for if you get something wrong, what concepts are in that answer choice that you’re falling for. We’re also capturing when you log into the system; how much you do; what tasks you do; what you don’t do; what was recommended that you do that you didn’t do, and vice versa. Your time on task for every little task, whether it’s reading something or doing a practice question or watching something. Your click rate—how fast you’re clicking on stuff. You can imagine one student accessing different material. If her click rate increases between math and verbal—maybe she’s going through the verbal a little faster—maybe it’s a little easier for her. (http://chronicle.com/article/A-Conversation-With-2/132953/)
- Shifting from an institution-centered view to a student-centered view. How will we shift processes, assessments, credentials, identities to track learners through out their lives? Sebastian Thrun observes that learners’ lives have changed.
- Old: short period of education followed by long period of work
- New: learning, reinvention, work intertwined
- Along the lines of big data: Noodle is a cradle-to-grave education recommendation engine. “We’ve created a dynamic recommendation engine that will deliver highly compatible and personalized search for ‘best-fit’ education solutions,” (http://edtechdigest.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/interview-using-your-noodle-with-joe-morgan/) 2Tor’s John Katzman is Chairman.
Innovate.EDU 