Select Page

Here, Mr Gardner Campbell, Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Student Success at Commonwealth University, discusses the challenges in using learning analytics.

Essentially he’s bringing our attention to the reality that numbers don’t always say all that we impart to them, and that other human perception systems are needed too…to truly understand what we want to understand. He cites an “idea explorer” from the 60’s, Gregory Bateson. and his book “The Ecology of Mind”…which tried to explain a bit how our brain and ideas are “organized” into systems.

Today, we still struggle with models that can accommodate how our brain is structured, and how it works, and how we might best interpret what analytic big data seem to be telling us.

Again, thanks to Claire Howell Major who put this research together in her book: Teaching Online published this spring.

[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Caution-in-Learning-Analytics.docx”]