Academic Analytics

Academic Analytics 

Phil Long and George Siemens (pp 32) state that computers,

mobile devices(particularly smart phones ) and enterprise learning management systems (LMSs) include a huge amount of data. Also it is worth mentioning about such types of microblogs as Facebook and twitter that nowadays became the main sources of data. Through collecting and analyzing each tweets and posts, it becomes possible to collect the tones of valuable info about the person. The main and very obvious example of Academic Analytics that I have experienced working with is MOODLE (type of LMS). There are many useful opportunities given to the teachers to explore in the Moodle e.g. to view how many times the specific person has logged in his/her account, to check  when the specific assignment has been uploaded, as well as to compare the probability of  students’  right and wrong  answers of assignments.

So, Based on the literature reviewed, the following video http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html   and discussion during the class at the university I have come up with several advantages and disadvantages of Academic analytics.

Advantages

• ·         Teachers can have total control of their students “academic actions online”. E.g. if the teacher sees that that particular student does not log in very often and does not upload the assignments on time etc. she can encourage the student to become active or may help that student if he/she is having a technical misunderstandings or hard time with the specific assignments.
• ·         When the teacher sees many students doing the same mistake on the specific assignment that will remind the teacher to go back and do some changes concerning that problem (either explaining the material once more or make changes in the assignment itself) in the specific activity.

Disadvantages

• ·         Following the students’ actions all the time will cause inconvenience for the students i.e. they may feel uncomfortable and lose the sense of individuality in case be followed by the teachers.
• ·         Sometimes there may be arise technical problems in the system  that may show wrong analysis

I think that the advantages and disadvantages that I mentioned above are only 10 percent of the observed part of Academic analytics, however it seems that both students and teachers mostly  benefit  from the analytical data provided by LMSs.