Poughkeepsie – the LAK15 location
At [LAK15]1 I’m co-organising a workshop on the temporal aspect of learning and its analysis. The (2 page) proceedings piece is now live on ORO: “[It’s About Time: 4th International Workshop on Temporal Analyses of Learning Data]2“. The workshop’s organised with Alyssa Wise, Bodong Chen, and Britte Cheng so my thanks to them for working with me on what promises to be a really interesting session. More information can be found on the [workshop website]3 which we’ll probably add to before and after the day. Abstract: > Interest in analyses that probe the temporal aspects of learning continues to grow. The study of common and consequential sequences of events (such as learners accessing resources, interacting with other learners and engaging in self-regulatory activities) and how these are associated with learning outcomes, as well as the ways in which knowledge and skills grow or evolve over time are both core areas of interest. Learning analytics datasets are replete with fine-grained temporal data: click streams; chat logs; document edit histories (e.g. wikis, etherpads); motion tracking (e.g. eye-tracking, Microsoft Kinect), and so on. However, the emerging area of temporal analysis presents both technical and theoretical challenges in appropriating suitable techniques and interpreting results in the context of learning. The learning analytics community offers a productive focal ground for exploring and furthering efforts to address these challenges as it is already positioned in the “‘middle space’ where learning and analytic concerns meet” (Suthers & Verbert, 2013, p 1). This workshop, the fourth in a series on temporal analysis of learning, provides a focal point for analytics researchers to consider issues around and approaches to temporality in learning analytics. I’ll also be presenting a short paper (co-author Karen Littleton – thanks Karen!), also now live on ORO: [Developing a multiple-document-processing performance assessment for epistemic literacy]4 Abstract: > The LAK15 theme “shifts the focus from data to impact”, noting the potential for Learning Analytics based on existing technologies to have scalable impact on learning for people of all ages. For such demand and potential in scalability to be met the challenges of addressing higher-order thinking skills should be addressed. This paper discuses one such approach – the creation of an analytic and task model to probe epistemic cognition in complex literacy tasks. The research uses existing technologies in novel ways to build a conceptually grounded model of trace-indicators for epistemic-commitments in information seeking behaviors. We argue that such an evidence centered approach is fundamental to realizing the potential of analytics, which should maintain a strong association with learning theory.