300|Pic of me giving talk at NYU

New talk at NYU, blurb from their website below, and then the slides (on slideshare).

Learning Analytics Research Network (LEARN) invites you to join us for a talk about the exciting ways in which the University of Technology Sydney is using participatory design to augment existing classroom practices with learning analytics. Simon Knight, a LEARN Visiting Scholar from the University of Technology Sydney, will introduce a variety of projects, including their work developing analytics to support student writing.

Come meet others at NYU interested in learning analytics while learning from the examples of leading work in Australia. A light lunch will be served and the talk will be followed by a short Q&A. RSVP is required.

About Simon Knight

Simon Knight is a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney in the Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation. His research investigates how people find and evaluate evidence, particularly in the context of learning and educator practices. Dr Knight received his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Leeds before completing a teacher education program and Philosophy of Education MA at the UCL Institute of Education. Following teaching high school social sciences, Dr Knight completed an MPhil in Educational Research Methods at Cambridge, and PhD in Learning Analytics at the UK Open University.

About Simon’s Talk

How do we make use of data about our students to support their learning, and where does learning analytics fit into that? Educators are increasingly asked to work with data and technologies such as learning analytics to support and provide evidence of student learning. However, what learning analytics developers should design for, and how educators will implement analytics, is unclear. Learning analytics risks the same levels of low uptake and implementation as many other educational technologies if they do not align with educator practice and needs. How then do we tackle this gap, to support and develop technologies that are implemented in practice, for impact on learning?

At the University of Technology Sydney, we have taken a participatory design based approach to designing and implementing learning analytics in practice, and understanding their impact. In our work we have identified existing practices with which learning analytics may be aligned to augment them. This talk introduces some of these projects, particularly drawing on our work in developing analytics to support student writing (writing analytics), giving examples of how analytics were aligned with existing pedagogic practices to support learning. Through this augmentation, supported by design-based approaches, we argue we can develop research and practice in tandem.

Aligning Learning Analytics with Classroom Practices & Needs from Simon Knight