This document discusses learning analytics and provides examples of its applications. It begins with definitions of learning analytics and outlines its goal of understanding and optimizing learning. Examples are then given of learning analytics systems that provide feedback to students, analyze social media data, and predict student success. The document concludes by discussing future scenarios for using learning analytics in educational research and creating engaging data visualizations.

1. Learning Analytics
explorations of learning data
Andrew Deacon
Centre for Educational Technology
University of Cape Town
Learning and Development community of practice – 9 Nov 2012

2. Outline
• Understandings of learning analytics
• Instructional design case
• Data landscape in learning organizations
• Trends within the organization context
• Connections with external contexts
• Future scenarios

3. Search-term: ‘Analytics’
Google Trends

4. Learning Analytics
The measurement, collection, analysis
and reporting of data about learners
and their contexts, for purposes of
understanding and optimising learning
and the environments in which it
occurs.
Learning Analytics 2011 Conference, https://tekri.athabascau.ca/analytics

5. Age of Big Data
Source: The Economist

6. An Instructional Design Case

7. Merrill on ID
Instruction involves directing students to
appropriate learning activities;
guiding students to appropriate knowledge;
helping students rehearse, encode, and
process information;
monitoring student performance;
and providing feedback as to the
appropriateness of the student’s learning
activities and practice performance.

8. NewsScripts: Scriptwriting exercise
1) Watch footage, note 2) Write script following 3) Take note of
significant details and TV news writing feedback on
research online. conventions. some issues.

9. NewsScripts: Nit-picking bot
• Rather than lots of instructions
– that students would not follow anyway
• Provide feedback on script
– Check script length
e.g., read at 3 words per second
– Flag words editors avoid
e.g., never use: ‘As the footage shows’
– Emphasise active voice
e.g., avoid: ‘were’

10. NewsScripts: Context
• 2nd year UCT Media Studies course
• Linked to lectures on media writing genres
• 250 students
• 2h to complete
180-word script
• 10% of mark
• Used since 2001
(with gaps)

11. Questions for ID
• Why is it so difficult to entrench such learning
interventions in university curricula?
• Curriculum integration tensions (relevance)
– Media writing & Essay writing
– Media production & Theory & critique
– Online teaching spaces & Traditional modes

12. Educational data landscape
Institutional Individual (in wider Communities of Practice)
Institutional data Personal Learning Social media
& learning environments Environments (PLE) & social learning
• ERP Systems
• Historical performance data
• Learning management system data
• Libraries
• School application data
• Turnitin Reports
• Demographics
Data is Data is Data is
• Accessible • Almost unattainable • Restricted
• Can identify individuals • Difficult to link to individuals • Difficult to link to
individuals

13. Within the institutional contexts

14. Purdue University's Course Signals
• Early warning signs
provides intervention to
students who may not
be performing well
• Marks from course
• Time on tasks
• Past performance Source:
http://www.itap.purdue.edu/learning/tools/signals

16. Students’ use of Vula in a course
Submission of
assignments
Polling of
students
Site visits
Content
accessed
Chat room
activity
Sectioning
of students

17. Sociogram of a discussion forum
Dawson (2010)

18. Words in chats used by failing students

19. Words used by Lecturers vs Students
Marks;
thanks;
‘Weiten’ – test;
textbook Tut;
author guys
Week;
pages
Used more by Used more by
Lecturers/tutors Students

20. Predicting success
Chemistry – 1st year course
NBT - National Benchmark Tests

21. Predicting success

22. Predicting success

23. Predicting success

24. Beyond the institution context
Social Media / PLEs / CoP

25. Big breakthroughs happen
when what is suddenly
possible meets what is
desperately necessary.
Thomas Friedman
New York Times, 15 May 2012

26. High profile MOOCs

27. Coursera open online course

28. Coursera open online course
• Gamification course
– 81,000 registrations
– 8,280 received certificates (10%)
• Participation
– 20,000 forum posts
– 187,000 peer evaluations by 13,000 students
– Facebook group: 3,400 members
– Twitter: > 2,700 tweets #gamification12

29. Gamification course participation
100%
80% Registers
60% Watchers
Submitters
40% Writers
Certificate
20%
0%

30. Coursera: learning from videos
Concept Mapping or Retrieval Practice
J D Karpicke, J R Blunt Science 2011;331:772-775
Published by AAAS

31. If our aim is to understand people’s
behaviour rather than simply to record
it, we want to know about primary
groups, neighbourhoods, organizations,
social circles, and communities; about
interaction, communication, role
expectations, and social control.
Allen Barton, 1968, cited in Freeman (2004)
Source: CC BY-SA 3.0

32. UCT and social media
• Prominent links to:
– Facebook
– Flickr
– LinkedIn
– YouTube

33. Twitter: UCT chatter
• Six months of data (April – Sept 2011)
• Tweets including a UCT hashtag or text
#UCT, #Ikeys, University of Cape Town, …
• Attributes; how tweets are amplified
• Just over 5,000 tweets
Cannot capture every tweet on the topic
And some data cleaning required

34. Twitter: apps & locations
Blackberry Twitter Ubersocial Others
17%
Blackberry
27%
Smartphone
geo-location
20%
36%
Cell phones

35. Twitter: tweeter relationships
Small number of
frequent tweeters
1. Drama student
(162)
2. UCT Radio
(132)
3. Science student
(84)

36. Twitter: viral #UCT
6 months of tweets Varsity Cup
final
Helicopter
crash

37. Flickr: helicopter crash at UCT
Ian Barbour - http://www.flickr.com/people/barbourians/

38. Twitter: helicopter crash at UCT
• Peak of 140 tweets
in 5 minutes
• Media organisations
tweets get re-tweeted
• Crash or hard-landing?
2 hours
after the
event

39. Facebook: all friend relationships
Paul Butler http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

40. 1st-year course
combinations HS
HUM
COM
SCI
EBE

41. Effective visualisations
The success of a visualization is based
on deep knowledge and care about
the substance, and the
quality, relevance and integrity of the
content.
(Tufte 1981)

42. Correlation and causation
• Correlation does not imply causation
– Covariation is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for causality
– Correlation is not causation
(but could be a hint)

43. Future scenarios
• Learning analytics for educational research
– Instructional data within wider contexts
– Social media & PLE outside formal contexts
– Modelling and predicting success
– Supporting intervention opportunities
– Reproducible research
– Ethical considerations
• Learning analytics for visualisations
– Presenting data in engaging forms
– Relating several variables

44. Software references
• Gephi – network analysis, data collection
• NodeXL – network analysis, data collection
• TAGS – Twitter data collection (Google Drive)
• Word cloud – R package (wordcloud)
• Geo-location map – R package (RgoogleMaps)
• Excel – spreadsheet, charts
• SPSS – statistical analysis, graphs

45. Literature references
• Baker, S.J.D., Yacef, K. (2009) The State of Educational Data Mining
in 2009: A Review and Future Visions:
http://www.educationaldatamining.org/JEDM/images/articles/vol1
/issue1/JEDMVol1Issue1_BakerYacef.pdf
• Dawson, S. 2010. ‘Seeing’ the learning community: An exploration
of the development of a resource for monitoring online student
networking. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(5), 736-
752.
• Freeman, C. (2004) The Development of Social Network Analysis: A
Study in the Sociology of Science. Empirical Press: Vancouver, BC
Canada.
• Fritz, J. (2011) Learning Analytics. Presentation prepared for
Learning and Knowledge Analytics course 2011
(LAK11). http://www.slideshare.net/BCcampus/learning-analytics-
fritz

46. FatFonts references
• by Miguel Nacenta, Uta Hinrichs, and Sheelagh Carpendale
• Area of each number is exactly proportional to
its value - http://fatfonts.org
Source: http://fatfonts.org