Learning Analytics in a Mobile World - A Community Information Systems Perspective

This is the presentation I gave in the eMadrid Seminar Series. Thanks to Carlos Delgado Kloos and all the people at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid in Leganes. Because the presentation have been viewed so often now, I decided the make a quick walk through at least the first couple of slides which present our theoretical approach to learning analytics. If you have comments or questions please feel free to raise your voice.

Learning Analytics has become a hot topic in the technology enhanced learning community and a lot of research groups are contributing to the field in the moment. Our perspective on learning analytics is on learning communities. Essentially, we - the Advanced Community Information Systems group at RWTH Aachen (slide 5) - think that self-regulated learning processes are embedded in community-regulated learning processes (slide 6). We think, that learning media have a great influence on learning processes since knowledge is not media-independent. From this perspective, we try to develop social learning theories like communities of practice by Etienne Wenger (slide 7) into media-specific knowledge creation theories. To cross the gap between the observation of network of media artifacts and the evidence of social learning processes taking place we deploy a set of methods, among others social network analysis (slide 8). To guide our research we build concrete learning environments but also gather media artifacts in a repository enabling cross-community and cross-media analysis. This repository is called the MediaBase (slide 11). In our most recent research we connect our learning environments and the MediaBase by a new new community monitoring approach called MobSOS (slide 10). MobSOS is able to combine quantitative data and qualitative data for comprehensive insights into community activities. This is reached by conceptualizing the community learning process as a socio-technical learning process (slide  9). We are validating our approach in a lot of ongoing EU funded research projects in the area of technlogy enhanced learning.

Learning Analytics in a Mobile World - A Community Information Systems Perspective

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Abstract:

With the increasing availability of smart phones and tablets as well as growing mobile bandwidth, mobile learning offers by the means of apps and electronic books become a commodity. In this presentation I motivate by examples that professional communities need learning support beyond the commodity level. Learning analytics in such settings is more than simple assessment strategies but needs a deep understanding of interactions between learners and systems, learner and learning resources as well as learners among each others. Such a perspective is delivered by community information systems serving the needs of mobile communities. The meaningful combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment strategies supports the understanding of learner goals, learning processes and community reflection. Case studies from ongoing EU research projects like ROLE, GALA and TELMAP will support the argumentation.