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.
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Mr. Campbell quote from Bateson is a bit strident, and comes from the 60’s when rhetoric was very very heated; nonetheless this phrase below rings true as descriptor for much of established educational institutions today. Bateson’s publications range from the 60’s through about 1980 when he died, and some posthumous collections and reprints.
“…compliant proctors of compliant students for whom “student success means only “success at being a student”.
Tracking student activity in posts seems a useful tool in discovering the best approach to personalize course delivery. Of course, schools run into privacy issues regarding tracking students by looking at their posts in a course.