Learning and Academic Analytics

                                        
                                         LEARNING AND ACADEMIC ANALYTICS


When I first heard the expressions learning and academic analytics I thought they were the same and we could use either one or the other. But now, as I understand, learning analytics is more specific and narrower than academic analytics. Learning Analytics  as defined in the first international Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (Long & Siemens, 2011) is analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts for purposes of understanding learning. Academic Analytics analyses data at an institutional and international level (Goldstein & Kats, 2005).  
Before trying to express my impressions about Analytics I would life to refer to my positive impressions about Online education. Though I did this in my previous post the video by Daphne Foller made me do it again and again.First of all, it gives opportunity to move away from the constraints of the physical classroom and second, as Foller presented in the video, gain  the best content taken from the best courses of the best institutions.WOW:))) it really does wonders. 

However, the video not only aimed to show how best quality education is brought to so many people online but also how it becomes a way to acquire a huge amount of learners to provide the administrators managing the "business" of institutions with  sufficient data to research how people learn (Goldstein & Kats, 2005). This will help to analyse and find out what are the best learning strategies and what steps could be taken to improve the quality of education.
As mentioned in Goldstein & Kats' article (2005), with the growth of users trying to access information analytics is required to be expanded  to cope with the arena of higher education which is becoming a "burning platform. 
Observing the excel file provided by our instructor I saw how every click of the students in one writing course was collected together. So many data and that was only a very little fraction of what could be observed? This thought made me open my eyes wider and wider and think harder and harder to find ways to assist Data analysis. 

Picture retrieved from:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_jones/5342991372/sizes/m/in/photostream/