Hello Readers
What is learning analytics?
Learning analytics is the measurement, collection,
analysis, and reporting of data about learners, learning experiences,
and learning programs for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and
its impact on an organization’s performance.
The 4 levels of learning analytics
1.
Measurement
Analytics starts with measurement or the simple act of
tracking things and recording values to tell us what happened. Measurement
doesn’t require complicated math or statistics, but you must start by gathering
data. Otherwise, it’s impossible to do any analytics.
2.
Data Evaluation
Once the data has been captured, it's time to start evaluating it and assessing whether the data means something good or bad. At
this level, we’re applying high-school level math—averages, means, modes, and
basic statistics—to aggregate the data and establish benchmarks. In current
practice, most analytics fall into the basic data evaluation category, and
that’s OK. There’s tremendous value here, and opportunities for some huge wins.
3.
Advanced Evaluation
Exciting things start to happen as we get into the advanced
evaluation and apply college-level math. Here, we’re looking at things such as
correlations and regression analysis. We’re applying statistical techniques to
understand, not just what happened, but why it happened. Advanced evaluation
creates theories about causation, allowing us to focus on what works best and
scrap ineffective learning.
4.
Predictive & Prescriptive Analytics
The most sophisticated levels of analytics are predictive
and prescriptive analytics, which require graduate-level math and often rely on
AI or machine learning-powered by big data sets. Predictive analytics say,
“based on what’s happened in the past, here’s what is most likely to happen
next.” Prescriptive analytics take that a step further and say, “based on
what’s most likely to happen next, here’s the action we should take to optimize
the outcome.” Ultimately, when we get here, we rely on highly intelligent
recommendation engines that deliver just the right learning, at just the right
moment, in just the right way to significantly improve performance. As an
industry, we’re not there yet, but we can get there if we start measuring and
work our way up.
A recent study done by [1] gave the following learning
analytics for USP Students
As flexible learning forms part of mainstream educational
processes at the university, the collection of a wide variety of data on
student retention, their progression and graduation, is embedded in the
university’s core planning, development and quality assurance processes. This
kind of analytics includes monitoring of learner and learning behaviors, data
warehousing, and working with big data, building models and predicting trends,
and reporting to improve learning and teaching at the university as well as its
business processes. USP students, many of whom are part-time students with
families and jobs to sustain, may have a higher tendency to withdraw, or fail
to persist with their course of study for very personal reasons, which are not
related to their educational programs. For this reason alone, the university
takes very seriously the gathering of intelligence on all of its learners in
order to ensure that the educational opportunities it affords, more than
adequately meets their needs.
BYOD and mLearning
Mobile learning is any sort of learning that happens when
the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location or learning that happens
when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by
mobile technologies. These technologies makes learning easy for any user.
Devices such as smart phones, notebooks, laptops, tablets can be used.
Limitations of learning as in everywhere are overcome by using mobile learning
as it provides mobility through the use of portable mobile devices. The
m-learning team is tasked with looking into feasible options of including
mobile learning into tertiary education.
USP Mobile App
The University of the South Pacific is one of the premium
providers of education in the Pacific and is known to be connected to thousands
of people across the Pacific and even internationally[2]. With so many people
connected to the University, the efficiency in conveying information and
communication may vary from time. To ensure that the important bits of the
information are shared in time and efficiently, The University of the South
Pacific would like to introduce its very own USP Mobile App.
The USP Mobile App is an informative tool for students,
staff and visitors. The aim of the app is to have University information and
services accessible by the users instantly and efficiently. The USP Mobile App
has certain futures (course feed, course notification, Course/Exam timetable)
just for students who is available upon their login. It has features such as
News and Course Feed provides all the latest university and course news,
Notification Alert notifies users about announcements and activities, Events the feature shows all the events and activities in USP for the year as per USP
calendar, Course and Exam Timetable enables students to access their class and
exam schedules on their mobile devices, First Year tools have information on
important tools targeted for the first-year students, Emergency contacts have important contact for the user to contact in case of emergency, Frequently
Asked Questions feature allows users to get urgent assistance when needed,
Course Finder shows all the courses offered with their detail and game feature
is available to try out different formats of learning (edutainment). The USP
mobile App also links to the USP Campus Map that will help the app users to
find their way around USP. The app also has other university information. The the app will be continuously updated to have most of the USP’s online
functionalities in the app.
USP Pacific TAFE
SKILL ME UP App
The University South Pacific’s Pacific TAFE offers both
Pre-degree and Sub-degree programmes to its twelve member countries. With its
diverse nature, Pacific TAFE needs to be able to reach all its students
wherever they may be and provide them with learning support assistants.
The Pacific TAFE Learning Support APP is designed to provide key learning
support services to all our students wherever they are, whatever mode of
learning they are in, and at the times they need it most. Its creation resulted
from a survey showing that many students were not aware of our learning support
services, hence the decision to make it more accessible to them. Once
downloaded, learning support is at their fingertips.
Skill Me UP is based on the approved Learning Support Framework
and addresses 4 key areas of learning needs namely “Coping Well” for new
students, “Language and Literacy”, “Numeracy” and “Work Readiness”.
The app will be further strengthened via links to relevant demonstrative videos
and other resources.
It will also be used for notifications of workshops, conducting surveys and
will only be accessible to registered students of Pacific TAFE.
VR and AR
Virtual reality is a very new technology
and will take about 2-3 years to be adopted in the PICs. However, one way it
can be incorporated in our engineering syllabus is by having a virtual
laboratory. In our labs not, all equipment is present for research purposes
which might be available in other universities. Through this platform students
can perform research and come up with perfect outputs.”
Makerspaces
The Makerspace for Education site was born from a big idea!
What if we could have a site dedicated to innovative hands-on learning? A site
made for teachers, by teachers! Here is where the idea was born!
At the school of engineering, we are far beyond makerspace.
We at engineering use a design process for innovation i.e.
1.
Identify & define the problem
2.
Research
3.
Identify possible solutions
4.
Create a prototype
5.
Evaluate
6.
Refine
7.
Communicate
8.
Go back to step 1 and the process continues
until we get optimum results
We at engineering expose the student to the most relevant
programming microprocessors from the cheapest i.e. PIC and Arduino to the most expensive
in the Pacific d-SPACE and FPGA. With these programmable devices in our hands, there are unlimited possibilities e.g. from programming robotic arms to a
micro-grid. Please visit the school of engineering to see what we are up to!
Moving on, what is Turnitin?
Turnitin can be described as an electronic text matching
system that compares text in a student assignment against a database of sources and It provides an originality report in which ‘matched’ text is underlined,
color-coded, and linked to either the original source or a similar document on
its database…also offers an indication of the proportion of the submitted work
that matches other sources. The University of the South Pacific provides access
to the Turnitin Assignment tool as a Moodle activity. While Turnitin can be
used as a punitive measure to catch students who are copying the work of others
without acknowledgment, it is also valuable as a feedback mechanism to help
students learn what constitutes plagiarism and to help them to develop their
academic writing skills. Turnitin is one aspect of the adoption of a holistic
approach to academic integrity that can be used to teach students what
constitutes plagiarism as well as how to cite sources and reference correctly.
Turnitin can also provide indicators for staff where students may need help
with improving their writing skills.
Early Warning System (EWS) in place at USP,
There is a lot of emphases nowadays on the online management
system for teaching and learning. The shift in the pedagogy invariably warrants
innovative ways of monitoring student progress in the new and exciting ICT
driven learning environment. Early Warning System (EWS) piloted at The
University of the South Pacific (USP) monitors student progression using the
history of interactions, completion, and course achievement as indicators of
satisfactory or unsatisfactory performance. Incorporated within Moodle, the
real-time progress tracking system helps identify underperforming students so that
corrective measures and actions can be taken before it is too late. Students
are flagged on incomplete tasks, alerted on lack of engagement with online
activities, and informed on the progress made on popular course activities.
Course coordinators are able to identify student learning patterns and group
similar learners, which is a difficult task, especially in large classes. The
model will also assist the coordinators in evaluating and maintaining
courseware by identifying effective and ineffective course activities. The
paper presents the implementation report of EWS at USP, highlighting its share
of strengths and opportunities.
What is E-Assessment
It refers to the use of information technology in
innumerable ways to assess performance and measure student learning. The
notion of e-assessment was presented to overcome all the
inadequacies of traditional pen and paper assessment modes. Electronic
assessment arises from the use of Web-specific tools for assessment. It can be
used to assess theoretical knowledge (using e-testing software) as well as
practical skills (using e-portfolios or simulation software). It is also
called the online assessment/computer-based assessment in which information
technology is used to assess students’ academic progress. E-assessment is
the possibility to generate computer-based assessments done offline or even
online. An electronic assessment, in which all the assessment procedures from
the start to the end of assessment should be carried out
electronically. Electronic assessment, also known as e-assessment,
online assessment, computer-assisted/mediated assessment and computer-based
assessment is the use of information technology in numerous arrangements of
assessment such as educational assessment to evaluate and/or gather data about
the academic performance of an individual or a team.
When feedback is most effective
Feedback is most effective when:
- initiated
by the student, in conjunction with self and/or peer assessment
- teachers
carefully gauge when feedback is needed to promote learning
- teachers
use the kind of feedback prompt that best meets the need of the students,
at the level of support they need
- teachers
provide strategies to help the student to improve
- teachers
allow time for, and students can independently act on, feedback to improve
their learning
- feedback
takes place as a conversation
- teachers
check the adequacy of the feedback with the students.
Feedback is most effective when it is given at the time of
the learning so that students can make improvements as they go. However,
written feedback can be beneficial to learning if the following points are
taken into consideration:
- Some
students have difficulty understanding and processing written feedback.
- When
students are presented with grades and comments, the grades can cancel the
beneficial effects of the comments.
- Teachers
often give too much feedback, which students find overwhelming and
difficult to understand.
These "negatives" of written feedback can be
avoided if there is good communication between teacher and student so that the
student can say if the feedback is helpful or not in providing paths for
improvement.
Reference
[1]"View of Future
Proofing Higher Education in the Pacific with Open and Flexible Learning |
Journal of Learning for Development", Jl4d.org, 2020.
[Online]. Available: https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/309/349.
[Accessed: 08- Mar- 2020].
[2]2020. [Online]. Available:
https://www.usp.ac.fj/index.php?id=17681. [Accessed: 08- Mar- 2020].
Useful Links
https://net.educaus.edu/ir/library/pdf/ff1207s.pdf
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