- Overview
- Agenda
- Speakers
- Lodging
- Slides/Handouts
Learning Analytics Today...Tomorrow
Where: Forefront Center for Meetings and Conferences
404 Wyman Street
Waltham, MA 02451
Directions
Carpool information to this event can be found here.
When: Tuesday, June 11, 2019
9:00am - 3:00pm
Note: Registration starts at 7:30am
Workshop Organizer: Peter Hess of Boston College
Registration Fee:
NERCOMP Member: $145
Non Member $290
The registration fee includes lunch and unlimited am and pm breaks.
Event Overview
Come learn about data analytics options that are now available to many instructors and course designers. These options are often baked into our LMS, come with existing systems such as lecture capture and video servers, or are provided by Google Analytics. See examples of how to take advantage of this information that is currently not used to its full potential. We will look to the future by imagining ways data can be presented in more coherent and meaningful ways; including how data from institutional systems like the SIS might be integrated with participation and performance data from academic technologies. The discussion will include privacy concerns and efficacy, as well as technical and institutional barriers that might need to be overcome or accommodated.
Session Outcomes:
- Get past the hype about "learning analytics" and "big data" (phrases so overused they are in danger of losing all meaning) to evaluate and take advantage of existing or near term benefits.
- Using visualizations to produce reports that are easy to understand.
- Looking at different institutional roles (student, designer, instructor, advisor, and administrator) to account for their differing needs and challenges.
- Understanding which benefits/challenges are more open to near term application/resolution than others.
Registration Cancellation Policy:
By clicking on the "Order Now" button, you are indicating a commitment to attend and will be held responsible for the registration fee. Your fee can be refunded if you notify us of a cancellation at least 8 days prior to the event via email to nercomp@nercomp.org.
Event Disclaimer:
NERCOMP reserves the right to use any photographs or other mechanical recordings taken at NERCOMP events in promotional materials. No mechanical recordings of any kind may be used at NERCOMP events without the prior written consent of NERCOMP organizers and presenters. The views and opinions expressed at NERCOMP events do not necessarily reflect those of NERCOMP, nor does NERCOMP make any representation regarding the information presented at NERCOMP events.
7:30am - 9:00am Registration and Coffee
9:00am - 10:15am Introduction to Analytics: Today...Tomorrow
Speakers:
Dr. Mamta Saxena, Director of Assessment at the College of Professional Studies in the Academic Quality Assurance unit, Northeastern University
Melanie Kasparian, Associate Director of Assessment at the College of Professional Studies, Northeastern University
Peter Hess, Learning Technologies Administrator, Boston College
To set the stage for our discussion of where learning analytics are now and where they’re headed, we'll begin with a simple model that takes account of available data sources, techniques we can use to see patterns and make inferences from the data we collect, how that information might be communicated to people who can use it, and what actions they might take as a result. We'll consider some complications to our simple model, in terms of its internal logic, the ethical issues it might raise, and institutional realities. Representatives from Northeastern University, who attended the 9th annual International Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) Conference in Arizona, will share perspectives from that event. Together, we’ll consider the overarching question: what are the possible benefits (and to whom) and what are the possible negative effects (and for whom) of harvesting, selecting, and analyzing learning data?
10:15am - 10:30am Break
10:30am - 11:00am Institutional Connections: Collaborations and Barriers
Speaker: Bryan Blakeley, Director of Operations and Learning Design of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Boston College
This presentation will discuss institutional relationships and barriers involved with getting a learning analytics effort up and running. We’ll consider how many groups at the university are involved, the politics of data, and how difficult getting developer time truly is, not to mention the (completely necessary) security reviews, external vendor relationships and contracts, and concerns over the "black box" algorithms baked into most commercially-available analytics software.
11:00am - 11:30am Open Discussions
11:30am-12:15pm Data Analytics & Tools: Examples from the LMS
Speakers: Peter Hess, Learning Technologies Administrator, Boston College
Lauren Hankin, Associate Director of Technical Services, Northeastern University
In this session, we’ll take a look at implementations of learning analytics bundled in two widely used platforms, Canvas and Blackboard. With speakers from Boston College and Northeastern U., both of whom are in the early stages of investigation the tools provided in those LMSes, will take a look at Canvas's "Analytics BETA" and Blackboard Learn's "A4L" as examples of platforms that provide both learning-related data and basic tools for analyzing it. The goal is not to provide a tutorial, but to arrive at a general sense of what teachers, students, and other users of those platforms can look forward to in terms of getting actionable information from them.
12:15pm-1:00pm Lunch
1:00pm - 2:00pm How Large Institutions Can Use Large Data Sets and Tools
Speakers:
Agasthya Shenoy, Researcher for Vice Provost/Learning Research, Harvard University
Zachary Wang, Manager for Resources Adoption and Impact, Harvard’s Initiative for Learning and Teaching
In this session, we will discuss how large institutions can utilize the rapidly growing set of tools from the field of data science to improve the entire teaching and learning lifecycle. Using tools developed at Harvard as examples, we will look at where such tools can make an impact for faculty, administrators, and students. Given the massive amount of data universities now have access to with respect to teaching and learning, we will also consider what guiding principles will foster innovative and responsible use of such data.
2:00m-2:45pm Visualizing Data with Tableau
Speakers: Jamie Oh, Enterprise Account Manager, Tableau
Michael Tashakkori, Enterprise Sales Manager, Education, Tabeleau
Jeremy Weatherall, Senior Solutions Architect
This presentation will center on the Tableau platform showcasing some very common use cases with our education customers. The focus is to show different ways a Student Admissions dataset can be analyzed, ending up with a dynamic dashboard that enables users to interact and filter the data.
2:45pm-3:30pm Data analytics with Learning Data at MIT
Speaker: Anindya Roy, Learning Engineer OpenMIT Open Learning
MIT runs hundreds of courses on the edX platform, as MOOCs as well as for the students on campus. As the learners attempt problems, watch videos, and participate in educational activities on the platform, their activity logs tell us about the time-on-task behavior and engagement aspect of individual course components (e.g., do students attempt this problem?). Such basic analytics are more powerful when combined with a strategic course design process in place (e.g., do students attempt this problem more when it’s placed between highly watched video segments?). In this presentation, I will talk about how we handle data (collection, storage, processing), and how we are collaborating with the instructors to use the learning data for improved course design and better pedagogy.
Bryan Blakely
Bryan Blakeley is the Director of Operations and Learning Design of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Boston College. Bryan is responsible for digital learning initiatives at BC including managing online, on ground, and hybrid teaching initiatives, special projects and assessment. Bryan holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Wheaton College (IL) and M.A. in History from Boston College. He is also working toward his PhD in Higher Education Administration at Boston College, studying technology-enabled teaching and learning.
Laura Hankin
Lauren Hankin is the Associate Director of Technical Services at Northeastern University. She and her team facilitate the technical administration, maintenance, and support of the online learning technologies utilized by Northeastern's Lifelong Learning Network. Prior to joining Northeastern University in 2008, Lauren worked as a technical specialist in web application development and database management at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Peter Hess
Peter Hess serves as a Learning Technologies Administrator in the Center for Teaching Excellence at Boston College. His primary responsibilities are providing administrative and user and for the Canvas-using community at BC. He has formerly worked in similar roles at Brandeis, MIT and Emerson. He has organized several NERCOMP workshops from 2001 to the present.
Melanie Kasparian
Melanie Kasparian is the Associate Director of Assessment at the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University. She is both a professional and lifelong academic with expertise in assessment, e-learning, faculty development, and curriculum design. She supports the Director of Assessment in finding ways to collect and report on data related to learning analytics and the overall student experience.
Jamie Oh
Enterprise Account Manager, Northeast: Jamie Oh is an Enterprise Account Manager at Tableau, working exclusively with higher education institutions in the Northeast. She collaborates with universities and colleges to see and understand their data and in turn, better serve their students, faculty, and administration. Prior to joining Tableau, she managed public sector clients for 4+ years in her previous role at POLITICO.
Anindya Roy
Anindya analyzes student activity data to understand how the MIT students use the educational content on the MITx platform, and how the instructors teaching on the platform could use the insight to structure their courses and perform education research experiments. He has a PhD in Computational Physics and engaged in education research as a postdoc. These experiences provide the context for his work on learning data analysis, and helping with the experiment design around the available data.
Mamta Saxena
Dr. Mamta Saxena is the Director of Assessment at the College of Professional Studies in the Academic Quality Assurance unit at Northeastern University. In this position, she is responsible for providing leadership to execute a long-term strategy for data collection and measurement of student learning outcomes and learning analytics for the purpose of program improvement and instructional innovation. She works closely with the faculty, as well as the academic leadership in the College of Professional Studies to implement a culture of inquiry and continual improvement of academic programs. Prior to this, she has worked in corporate and academic settings to implement innovative and effective instructional design and assessment approaches, both in India and in the U.S.
Agasthya Shenoy
Agasthya Shenoy is a Researcher for the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Research Group at Harvard University. He investigates the ways in which data science techniques can be used to enhance teaching and learning experiences at Harvard and beyond. Before coming to Harvard, Agasthya worked at New Schools for New Orleans, coaching teachers and school leaders in data driven practices and developing city-wide school improvement pilot programs. He received a Master’s in Technology, Innovation, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a BA in Psychology and Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Michael Tashakkori
Enterprise Sales Manager, Education: Michael leads the Tableau Enterprise Education team for the Eastern United States at Tableau. He has over 12 years of experience in IT Sales with 7 of those focusing on Education and Government working with some of the largest software and cloud/infrastructure providers in the industry.
Zachary Wang
Zachary Wang is the Manager for Resources Adoption and Impact at Harvard’s Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT). He is responsible for facilitating the increased adoption across the University of teaching and learning tools and practices that are supported by HILT grants or developed by other Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning initiatives. Prior to joining Harvard, Zachary served as the Associate Director for Executive, Online, and Special Initiatives at Boston University School of Law. He earned a Master’s in Education from Boston University and also holds an LL.M. in Chinese Law from Tsinghua University and a J.D. from Boston College. Zachary received a B.A. from Columbia University in Political Science and East Asian Studies.
Jeremy Weatherall
Senior Solutions Architect Education: As a Sales Consultant leader, Jeremy is very passionate about empowering a data-driven culture through unleashing human ingenuity to drive creativity and innovation. Jeremy brings 20+ years of experience working in the BI/Analytics space and focuses on our some of our top Education and Government customers today.
Hotel Information:
Rooms are available at the Holiday Inn Express, Boston-Waltham, 385 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451
The room block for June 10, 2019 Reservations need to be made by May 15, 2019. Rates are $239 per night and include breakfast.
Booking link or make your reservation by calling: 1-877-213-6796 and use reservation code NERCOMP.
1. Learning Analytics Intro-Peter Hess, Boston College
4. Institutional Connections: Collaborations and Barriers, Bryan Blakeley, Boston College
5. Visualizing Data with Tableau, Jamie Oh, Michael Tashakkori and Jeremy Weatherall, Tableau
6. Data analytics with Learning Data at MIT, Anindya Roy, MIT