#ectel2019 #mlearn2019 keynote @GeoffStead on #informal learning at scale #languages #AI

Geoff Stead (@geoffstead ) takes the stage with a headset, a black shirt and walking like a fit Californian surfer (looking great).

As chief product person of the Babbel language corporation, he talks about informal learning at scale and will offer insights. 750 people all working on 1 app, fully funded by individuals willing to pay small amounts of money to learn languages. Mostly Euro-centric coming from the organic growth of the organisation.

5000 courses => 64000 lessons (unique language pairs), focus on communicative confidence, light-hearted, diverse topics. Well over 1 million subscribers (of which I am one - Spanish).

Digital = scale and reach
Team of 10 people can start the magic of the web.
How can we ensure Quality?
Learner centric, otherwise what is the value of the application?

Using a learner journey to unite efforts, to enable connections between learners. Conceptual flows of individuals that is used as the mantra to move the app forward.
See picture, where they also embed some spaced learning.
They work with patterns that are turned into fake persona's, which are designed and modeled (design thinking approach). Enabling developers and strategist to understand the different demographics. These personas are linked to learner journeys. Which enables to keep a focus on the learners.

Learning from the learners
What do they do? analytics, A/B tests, behavioral segmentation (showing what you did, signposting to what you did and worked...), interviews, intercept surveys, wishboard, market surveys, UX research (ask permission to video tape parts of the learner journey and ideas), customer service, market research. Not one is representative, but hoping that with enough different angles they are hoping to get closer to the actual learning in all it's complexity.

Dev at scale
20 different teams of people, a lot of independence, but only one product. So how likely it is that the releases are synchronizable as soon as they are launched by teams? Tripping over each other, contradictions, ...it quickly becomes chaos. So it is self-driven and autonomous, but potentially disastrous for the learners. Marketing and money was basis for scaling: stickers in planes and on poles in big cities, get people to pay a bit of money.

How do you trade off freedom versus working together
Teams organised around User Journey: Experience Groups (XGs) are clusters of teams across Product & Engineering, uniting tho enhance cross-functional collaboration around product ideas and speed up the development cycle: impressions, engagement, learning, learning media, platform and infrastructure (really interesting this!).

Product department 
Product is made up of many specialist teams. some teams are embedded within multi-function or engineering teams: didactics, product design, product management and QA, data engineering and analytics, quality and release management.

Towards "learning experience design"
Mixed multidisciplinary approach, but in larger companies most of the time they are not often set up as bridged teams in a multidisciplinary, cross-functionalness.

Babbel meetups in Berlin every 2 - 3 months, welcome to come and have a look.

LXD basics
digital learning is not content distribution, we are only a small slice of our learner's day, we never really know what is going on. Learning Experience Design, all about the multidisciplinary nature.

Learner engagement
It only works for them if they use it. What is the science of pulling learners back in?
Weekly active paying users: returners. One of the key drivers = 7 day return to learning (it is this that most of the dev teams use to validate short term impact of new features and refinements). If the people who try a new release, do they come back within 7 days to use this newly released option. This simplifies discussions on what is important.

Obsessive focus on interpreting events: Tableau, Amplitude (big fat data stream).
Mixing art and science to understand the engagement ladder (to help our learenrs focus - hooked (N Eyal) triggers motivation (Fogg), Nudge (Thaler, Flow state, spaced repetition, babbel qualitative and quantitative data....).

Gamification: treat with care, some very useful tools, often used for trivial impact.

AI to make Babbel more human
AI is a very broad umbrella term for a wide range of very specific disciplines. Babbel uses 'narrow AI' to focus on very specific problems/opportunities. NLP, CL, ASR...
Making interfaces more human (hybrid human-AI). Using NLP to give the automated feedback more human (eg "I understand what you meant").
Making guidance more useful: content recommendations, based on other, related topics and level. Still very much in beta. Optimising for speed, and identifying opportunities.

Rose Luckin's golden triangle is used.
Tutorbot corpus (Kate McCurdy, Dragan Gasevic...)

(Dutch) Yves Bosteels from Jan De Nul on eAcademy #vovpitstop @vovnetwerk #liveblog

Liveblog from Yves Bosteels over Kennis, Proces and Innovatie (just some pointers from his talk) Mostly in Dutch

Jan De Nul eAcademy (eLearning begonnen in 2017), combineren van opleidingen.

6500 medewerkers, internationaal, (80 – 100 lopende projecten, waarvoor opleiding aangeboden moeten worden, met een oplossing voor verschillende infrastructuur problemen, o.a. schepen).

Cornerstone on Demand (offline niet interessant voor schepen)

Online/offline LMS

Recurrente vragen van klanten

·       Training & Needs analysis
·       Show me training background
·       Show me certification
·       What other career training do you provide
·       Project-specific training (eg. Parkwind (nieuwe installatiemethode) – efficient bout placement
Schepen getest vanaf 2018

7 eModules (in 2018, gerigistreerde opleidingen, merendeel klassiek).

Iedere nieuwe werknemer krijgt onmiddellijk upcoming learning sessions, with training programs (cfr AICCM)

Impact van eAcademy precies gemeten?

• ·       Kwisformule ingewerkt in modules (zie volgende slides)
• ·       Dashboards voor teamlead en departementshoofden
• ·       Hoe wordt er voor verankering en transfer gezorgd van wat geleerd wordt?

o   Testen in de module

o   Materiaal blijft in de eBib beschikbaar

o   Nadien ook aan bod laten komen in klassieke training

o   Van aanvraag tot aanlevering (3000 – 25000 eur per module, met module ca. 30 minuten – we automate parts to 2000 EUR per module, with adapted assessment)

Hoe zorgen ze ervoor dat mensen naar de eAcademy gaan?

• ·       PR actie om animo te geven
• ·       Mensen wel enthousiast qua materiaal

Implementatie voor eAcademy

·       PM aanstellen om dit gestructureerd en ‘serieus’ aan te pakken

·       Use case vroeg om eigen IT-inbreng om alles op schepen te kunnen implementeren

·       HR & IT

Flipped classroom approach: manage the expectations, ensure pre-contact knowledge acquisition

RoadMap:

·       Alle schepen online krijgen

·       Interne opleidingsmatrices in eAcademy + mails met uitnodigingen

·       1370 externe cursussen naar eAcademy krijgen met een approval flow

Modules

·       Tegen eind maart: 16

·       Tegen eind 2019: 90

Recurrent materiaal

·       Bedrijfsrichtlijkenen

·       QHSSE

·       Recurrente treainingen zoals baggercursussen, DMS, IT, andere software

·       Inducties (projectsites & opslagplaatsen).

Expert academy: Finex portal (financial project and contact information): data and reports, ITA, Links, Tools, …. (test spec IT roll out)

Vraag naar soft-skills and Gamification (Check Marloes, Elizabeth interest: GC, Spain…)

Free OpenCon online Conference 25 January focus #K12 and #OER highlights #education #online

The best way to start the year is by promoting Openness either in education, development or academic work. Yes, it is all happening in January, so join or read up, which ever you prefer. Or simply keep informed with the @Open_Con twitter account.

OpenCon18 online on 25 January 2018

Athabasca University is organising a virtual, free K-12 Open Educational Resources Teacher conference on:

Date: January 25, 2018

Time: 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. MST (Mountain Standard Time = UTC -7)

Event URL: https://athabascau.adobeconnect.com/k12oc 

More information: http://bolt.athabascau.ca/index.php/oer-teacher-network/satellite-opencon-2017-building-the-k-12-oer-teacher-network/ 

Theme: “Building the K-12 OER Teacher Network”

Hashtag: #K-12OC2018

Open Education Resource (OER) novice and champions are invited. 

As a satellite offering of the OpenCon17 held in Berlin, the OpenCon18 will mark a first for educators, within Alberta and beyond. Presentations will range from OER fundamentals to the current K-12 OER landscape. Schedule:

10:00 – 10:25 MST	Understanding the Commons for K-12	Serena Henderson
10:25 – 10:30	5 min Break
10:30 – 10:55	Go Open: From the Ground Up	Kristina Ishmael Peters & Heather Callihan
10:55 – 11:00	5 min Break
11:00 – 11:25	Simple Curation: Using Online Tools to Collect, Organize, and Share OER Resources	Stephanie Slaton
11:25 – 11:30	5 min Break
11:30 -11:55	Opening Up 1-12 Education in Alberta	Frank McCallum & Lise Pethybridge
11:55 – Noon	5 min Break
12:00 – 12:25	The Multiply K-12 OER Media Project	Connie Blomgren
12:25 – 12:30	5 min Break
12: 30 – 12:55	Sharing K-12 Resources Across Canada: Silos, Gardens, or Open Range?	Randy Labonte

1:45 – 2:00

Building the K-12 OER Teacher Network – Next steps?

Facilitated by Connie Blomgren

Ending our virtual offering will be a unique dialogue – the “Berlin Remix”. A panel discussion has been organized so that the OpenCon18 K-12 Athabasca discussants (and attendees – asked upon registration) to view in advance a 20 minute video clip. This recording was part of the Berlin OpenCon17 conference where an international panel explored the broad topic of Inclusive Education and how OER responds to diversity and inclusion needs within education.

For our panel, the discussants will address this Berlin discussion and will “remix” two questions of OER curriculum creation. Within an OER curricular resource, how can educators consider: Who is missing? and Whose knowledge is reliable?

OER holds opportunity for rethinking how resources are accessed and used by K-12 educators. Come and join the “Berlin Remix” Panel Discussion - and one, some or all of the offerings! We hope to nurture a K-12 OER teacher network – and this virtual conference marks the first step of this journey.

Note: registration is suggested but not required. The K-12 OC will be recorded and archived on the BOLT Multi-author Blog.

http://bolt.athabascau.ca/index.php/oer-teacher-network/satellite-opencon-2017-building-the-k-12-oer-teacher-network/

OpenCon17 highlights

On November 11-13, the fourth annual OpenCon meeting in Berlin, Germany was held. OpenCon 2017 included a diverse set of panels, regional workshops, project presentations, unconference sessions, and a very first OpenCon Do-a-Thon. 

These activities are highlighted on a webpage here, so feel free to spend some time exploring and sharing them. You can also find notes to all sessions here, and a full Youtube playlist from 2017 here.

More on the Do-a-Thon

The OpenCon Do-a-Thon was organised in November 2017 and deserves a bit of extra attention: building off the concept of a hackathon, a do-a-thon is a work-sprint where people from different skill sets work together and collaborate on different challenges and projects. For OpenCon 2017’s do-a-thon, the focus was on building projects and solutions that seek to advance Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data. 

More information on the Do-a-Thon can be found here: http://doathon.opencon2017.org/  and to give you an idea of what they did, I am pasting some of the information here (feel free to look at the links, and see what the participants came up with):

1. Anyone can propose a problem to work on.

Is there a big question or challenge you want to tackle in Open Research and Education? Here's a chance to share it with the community and work together on designing a solution. Participants can submit challenges the day of the do-a-thon, but we'd love if folks could submit big questions they want to tackle in advance, too. Find out more about how to submit a challenge here.

2. Anyone can propose a project for others to collaborate on and contribute to.

Have a project idea you want to put into action? Or an existing project that needs development or support? The do-a-thon is a great opportunity to receive support and contributions from collaborators around the world. Learn more about how to propose and lead a project here.

3. Anyone can contribute their skills and ideas to existing challenges and projects.

Participate from wherever you are by contributing to one or more of the do-a-thon projects and challenges submitted. We expect that most of the action will take place on November 13th, but feel free to get in touch with project leads and see how you can help out beforehand! You can explore the growing list of projects and challenges we're working on here.

Call for papers, free online events and paper opportunity #CfP #elearning

In this post you can find three Call for Papers, two publication opportunities, and to start off multiple initiatives from EDEN (European Distance and eLearning Network) which has their online learning week (started yesterday, with free online seminars each day up until the 10th of November.

EDEN European Distance Learning week

An online, free event with daily seminars. The one for today is starting soon. More info here or look at the upcoming events below.
You simply need to provide your name and email to get registered, and also receive the link to the recording. 

Perspectives on Open Education

Tuesday, November 7, 2017, 13:00-14:30 CET
Format: Presentations and panel discussion
Moderator: Fabio Nascimbeni, EDEN Executive Committee member
Please click here for a more detailed description of the event
Click here to register

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Designing Learning Spaces in Open and Distance Learning

Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 13:00-14:30 CET
Format: Presentations and discussion
Moderator: Lisa Marie Blaschke, EDEN Vice-President
Please click here for a more detailed description of the event
Click here to register

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Re-considering Access, Quality and Flexibility of Education

Thursday, November 9, 2017, 13:00-14:30 CET
Format: Presentation and discussions
Moderator: Sandra Kucina Softic, EDEN Vice President
Please click here for a more detailed description of the event
Click here to register

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International Experiences with OER

Friday, November 10, 2017, 13:00-14:30 CET
Format: Presentation
Moderator: Antonella Poce, EDEN NAP Steering Committee Chair
Please click here for a more detailed description of the event
Click here to register

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EDEN Open Classroom Conference: Introducing Agenda for Open Professional Collaboration – Plenary broadcast 

Friday, November 10, 2017, 9:45 – 11:45 CET
Format: Plenary Session live stream – Live streaming of the plenary session of the EDEN Open Classroom Conference held in Kaunas, Lithuania. Link to the broadcast will be announced soon. Participants will be able to ask questions using the conference website.
Moderators: Kristijonas Jakubsonas, Elena Trepulė
Keynote speakers:

• Digitally competent teachers in the area of Open Education, Yves Punie, European Commission – DG JRC – Directorate Innovation and Growth
• The Joyous Voyage: situating open learning in a fractured world, Alan Bruce, Universal Learning Systems, Ireland, National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan
• National ICT Implementation Initiatives for Educational Openness, Vaino Brazdeikis, Ministry of Education and Science of The Republic of Lithuania
• Implementing recognition of open non-formal learning. Organizational perspective, Airina Volungevičienė, European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN), Vytautas Magnus University

Technological Innovation for Specialized Linguistic Domains (TISLID 18)

A conference on EdTech, MOOCs related to languages for digital lives and cultures.

Conference dates: 24-26 May 2018
Venue: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Abdisstraat 1, 9000 Gent, Belgium.

Call for abstracts deadline: 10 December 2018 (an 300 - 500 word abstract, more CfP info here).
More information: http://www.tislid18.ugent.be/

This conference offers a great opportunity to interchange knowledge and experiences, both in a formal and informal, creative way, regarding language-based digital realities. This event aims to promote academic debate on digital language technologies, with a special focus on their potential for promoting communication and (lifelong) learning.

The conference will include keynotes, paper presentations, posters, a roundtable debate (on Thursday and Friday) and workshops (on Saturday).

14th International Conference Mobile Learning 2018

Conference dates: 14 – 16 April 2018, Lisbon, Portugal

Info: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/

Deadline for papers: 8 December 2017

* Conference Scope
Mobile learning is concerned with a society on the move. In particular, with the study of “…how the mobility of learners augmented by personal and public technology can contribute to the process of gaining new knowledge, skills and experience” (Sharples et al. 2007).
The ML Conference seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of mobile learning research which illustrate developments in the field.
For more details and information about topics please check http://www.mlearning-conf.org/call-for-papers

* Paper Submission
This is a blind peer-reviewed conference. Authors are invited to submit their papers in English through the conference submission system by December 8, 2017. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously.

* Important Dates:
- Submission Deadline: 8 December 2017
- Notification to Authors: 8 January 2018
- Final Camera-Ready Submission and Early Registration: Until 29 January 2018
- Late Registration: After 29 January 2018

* Paper Publication
The papers will be published in book and electronic format with ISBN, will be made available through the Digital Library available at http://www.iadisportal.org/digital-library/showsearch.
The conference proceedings will be submitted for indexation by IET’s INSPEC, Elsevier, EI Compendex, Scopus, Thomson Reuters Web of Science, ERIC and other important indexing services.

* Conference Contact:
E-mail: secretariat@mlearning-conf.org
Web site: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/

EDEN Annual conference on 17 - 20 June 2018

Subject: investigating the micro, meso and macro in digital learning landscapes
Deadline for submissions: 5 February 2018
Information on the call for papers/workshops: http://www.eden-online.org/2018_genoa/submission/
Scope of the conference:

The demand for people with new, enhanced skills is growing. The volume of information produced and shared in all fields is overwhelming. Building the data economy became part of the EU Digital Single Market. Powerful and sophisticated ICT is part of everyday life, and the world of learning is not an exception. Pressure is on all players of the online education community to keep up with new learning solutions, and better supply the skills currently demanded by growing economies.
Open Education continues its success, providing radical advances in knowledge acquisition, sharing, distribution, and improving business models. Digital credentials and open badges are the new currencies which are beginning to transform the economic models in education.
Social and economic tensions continue to raise the issues of scalability, the micro-credentialling of education, training and skill development processes. Practitioners and stakeholders are eagerly seeking right approaches to providing learning opportunities, and many scholars are researching holistic answers.
Micro, meso and macro aspects provide an interesting range of lenses for considering the problem. These aspects may be applied in a general sense, distinguishing between the learning of individuals (e.g through mobile learning), learning at the institutional or group levels through a meso lens, and the learning of organizations or societies directed through policies through the macro lens.

EDENchat initiative, using the twitter chat approach on subjects related to distance, open and eLearning

#EDENChat is an online discussion event on Twitter initiated by Steering Committee of the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP). It is mediated by members of the NAP community and runs for approximately 1 hour. Anyone can join in and contribute to the discussion which is presented in a Question and Answer format, and focuses on current issues in distance, open and e-learning.
EDENchat schedule:

European Distance Learning Week #EDENChat	November 8, 2017
What is Open Web?	November 22, 2017
What are Open Licenses?	December 6, 2017
What are Open Degrees & Open Badges?	December 20, 2017

More information (and prior chat info):  http://www.eden-online.org/events/ and here http://www.eden-online.org/resources/edenchat/

Opportunities for publication: one on mobile learning, and one on launching at technology driven university.

IGI global: Handbook of Research on Challenges and Opportunities in Launching a Technology-Driven International University 

Publication edited byDr. Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, Executive Director of the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA).

Deadline for chapter proposals: 30 November 2017.
Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by no later than December 13, 2017 about the status of their proposals and will receive chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by January 30, 2018. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind basis. Contributors may also be requested to be engaged as reviewers for this project.
To view the full call for papers, with recommended topic areas, please visit the link here: https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/2913


The aim of this publication is to offer both empirical and theoretical research focused on the effective construction of technology-driven higher learning international universities. Themes such as: developing an accelerated and innovative curriculum, the recruitment and retention of internationally renowned faculty and researchers to lead courses, as well as the development of an on-campus and distance learning system will be presented. Also, taking into consideration the financial and economic impacts of launching a university – specifically, how to identify the appropriate locale for universities and/or branch campuses, which will ideally complement the local interest of business sectors within the selected location.

The target audience for this publication will be entrepreneurs, practitioners, academicians, instructional designers, administrators, government officials, and independent researchers and consultants focused on online education research and scholarship, educational leadership and administration, educational marketing, educational policy, course management, instructional design, educational theory and practice, human resources in educational settings, and curriculum design and management.

Mobile book looking for contributors, but it costs 350 Swiss Franks (approx. 300 EUR or 350 USD)

This looks like a good, yet paid, opportunity for those wanting to get a chapter in a research book on mobile learning. The publication is international and Open Access, but indeed the publishers demand a downpayment to get accepted (so, only when you will be published) chapters published.
Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education) is currently running a Special Issue "Mobile Learning" (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special_issues/Mobile_Learning), which is guest edited by Prof. Maria Uther, from the University of Winchester, UK.
The submission deadline is 31 May 2018. You may send your manuscript now or up until the deadline. Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

This Special Issue, Mobile Learning, addresses the increasing popularity of mobile devices and their potential for developing learning. Articles are welcomed for inclusion in this Special Issue that:
(1) provide empirical evidence on the efficacy of mobile devices for learning applications; (2) showcase novel uses or technical developments for mobile devices in learning; (3) review pedagogical and user interface design considerations and develop theories around the design of mobile learning applications; (4) interface mobile technologies with other technologies to enhance learning (e.g., speech recognition, augmented reality, psychophysiological recording); and (5) offer examples of situated learning (e.g. using augmented/virtual reality technology) with mobile devices. The above topics are indicative and we would also welcome any papers relating to mobile learning that do not immediately fit into the above categories.

For further reading, please follow the link to the Special Issue Website at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special_issues/Mobile_Learning. We also encourage authors to send a short abstract or tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance (education@mdpi.com).

If the Special Issue collects more than 10 papers, it will be made available in printed book format. An example could be seen at http://books.mdpi.com/.

/Education Sciences/ (ISSN 2227-7102) is an international and open access journal, which is double-blind peer-reviewed. It is published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations, as indicated by several studies. Open access is supported by the authors and their institutes. More information is available at http://www.mdpi.com/about/openaccess/. If you decide to submit to this Special Issue, Article Processing Charges (APC) of CHF 350 is applied. For more information on APCs please visit http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc/

.
Education Sciences has been accepted for inclusion in ESCI http://mjl.clarivate.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=2227-7102
For further details on the submission process, please see the instructions for authors at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/instructions.

#LearningTechDay in Belgium, come and join experts #EdTech #elearning

One of the highlights for Professional eLearning is coming up next month. On Tuesday 20 June 2017, Mathias Vermeulen (CEO of Winston Wolfe) organizes the Belgian LearningTechDay an annual event that always seems to trigger multiple ideas.

Location: Zebra in Ghent, Belgium. Zebra is a unique project that combines housing, culture and economy all in one. And it has cheap parking space.

This is not just any other eLearning opportunity. If you are in the neighborhood and you are interested in eLearning, this is the place to be! The three keynotes alone will make it worth your while: Stephen Downes (integrating MOOCs in corporations), Nell Watson (Artificial Intelligence in all aspects of learning, living and society), and Jamie Good (Neuroscience, habit-building and technology).

Although some of the break-out sessions are in Dutch, the keynotes are in English, and I am pretty sure everyone participating speaks English.

I will also share a presentation, specifically on the Instructional Design Variation Matrix, an ongoing work which looks at parameters that are often opposite to each other, and bridging these opposites with possible online learning steps befitting diverse instructional design demands. This is slowly but surely resulting in a manual that can be used as a job aid to quickly look for options to implement diverse learning purposes, providing solutions for your own specific learning environment or tailored to your own target population (e.g. master students, informal learners, professional learners).

To give an idea, the Instructional Design Variation Matrix lists an array of actions that can be taken to address different learning parameters (individual versus sociaal learning, memorizing content versus challenge-based education, standardized learning versus contextualized learning, just-in-time performance versus long-term implementation, …). Because the designs are linked to different (intended) learning objectives, it enables the online material to be used in a variety of learning trajectories.

Liveblog #Educon17 @Kinshuk1 Enhancing learning through adaptivity and personalization in ubiquitous environments

Kinshuk (http://www.kinshuk.info ) was streamed in live from Austin, Texas. Lately he is also increasingly engagement with industry on EdTech (yes, the bridge between university and industry is tightening).

The learning environment is expanding outside of the classroom environment, so how can we incorporate learning in all these environments. Some opportunities (free)

• Series in springer collection in EdTech (look up book guidelines for this series: I think it is http://www.springer.com/series/11777 ), any new advancements are welcomed.
•  Journal which is completely open access called ‘smart learning environments’ (Inge, look this up: http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/40561 ) , focus on improved learning environments, and bringing these traditional environments and transforming them into online learning environments.
• International association of smart learning environments http://www.iaslo.net they look for evidence-based research on the subject.

Current trends in learning

·        Inclusive education,

·        Focus on individual strengths and needs

·        Various learning scenarios – in clsass and outdoor environments

·        Relevance of the learning scenarios with learners living and working environments

·        Authentic learning with physical as well as digital resources

Result: better learning experience due to authentic learning, and ubiquitous access to learning. So learning is now more easily fitted to real life of the learner. Learning needs to be relevant to the learner, but as a teacher you need to become aware of how to capture the attention outside of the classroom.

This means the teachers must become aware of the new teaching/learning opportunities.

Vision

Learning is happening everywhere, at any time, and is highly contextualised.

Seamless integration of learning into every aspect of life with implies immersive, always on learning that happens so naturally and in such small chunks that no conscious effort in needed by actively learning while engaged in education.

We need to make learning as meaningful as possible. The goal of the learning needs to be put across to all the learners, and the learning needs to be made visible (e.g. Hattie)… but all of this is highly demanding for the teacher. Every student is doing different things, so how can the teacher know that her learners are learning? That is why we are looking for much more data, much more information, and the assessments is also coming out of the classrooms and out of the formal, classic design of assignments and assessments.

Smart learning analytics is used to discover what type of learning data is coming in. Discover, analyze and make sense of student, instruction and environmental data from multiple sources to identify learning traces in order to facilitate instructional support in authentic learning environments. This also opens a new type of teaching, namely coaching, give guidance, personalise the feedback given the learner data or the learner information that is viewed and analysed by the teacher. For example, a  flower bed with a placard on what the flowers are, but on the top right there is a QR code with additional information on the flowers, but embedded in its full cycle, use and systematic botanical information. So this means that the information is delivered in an adaptive way (as complex as the learner wants to view it), and open to all. The learning system provides you authentic information within a contextual reality, and with the option to zoom in on additional information. (look at iSpot as additional learning scenario).

Information can now come from different sources: mobiles, environment, internet, people, …. It is like learning traces, a small learning impression that can tell us that learning is actually happening. For instance, looking at paintings in a museum, one painting captures the learners attention, and some things are different to other paintings. The learner might learn something a week later, and gets more information on it, and now a story can be shared by the learner to people that are outside of the classroom. This actual fact proofs that learning has happened.

But a system needs to be in place to proof or visualise the actual learning that is happening.

Remark on data: the learners need to be made aware that their data might be used, for privacy and policy issues.

How can we design instructional support that will make this type of smart learning happen and make it measurable.

Discover

Past record and real-time observation of: learner’s capabilities, preferences and competencies, learenr’s location, learner’s technological use, technologies surrounding the learner, changes keep happening in the learner’s situational context. So knowing the past, does not mean that what is happening today is a meaningful difference to the previous actions, as the contexts of today constantly change.

Miller was pioneering (5 elements of information memorisation).

And although the tech can provide the teachers with lots of additional data, the actual learning experience needs to take into account the changing environment and connected conditions of this environments.

Human-machine learning has an effect on the actual learning process.

Is the learner trying to find new information, is that new information screened critically…

We do have lots of mechanisms that we use to see what the learners are going through and how the learning occurs.

Informal learning happens everywhere, across the potential learning environments, and is there a record of the learning somewhere? Small learning can happen anywhere, but how can we identify it and use it as evidence of learning.

Making sense: learning traces

A learning trace comprises of a network of observed study activities that lead to a measurable cchunk of learning.

Learning traces are sensed ad supply data to learning analytics, where data is typically big, un/semi structured, seemingly unrelated, not quite truthful, and fits multiple models and theories.

What kind of learning, which models can be used to map learning traces to try to understand that learning is actually happening. Learning traces are also important to understand personalised learning, differentiated learning that is happening across the population in all its variety.

Why learning traces are important

Different students can adopt different learning approaches for the same learning activity

Ex,, why a pointed object penetrates better than a blunt object?

A visual-oriented learner may choose to use different approach than an sensoratory learner.

Learner awareness

Personalisation of learning experience through dynamic learner modeling: performance, meta-cognitive skills, cognitive skills, learning styles, affective state, physiological symptoms (eg. The learner is doing something in the lab, and suddenly heart rate will increase, why? What kind of concept is the learners using, are there comparable situations of learning where this occurred?). All of this are tools that can make teachers more informed, enabling more informed decisions on learning.

Technological awareness

Personalization of learning experience through the identification of technological functionality.

Identifying various device functionality

Dynamically optimize the content to suit the functionality

Display capability, audio and video capability…

Location awareness

Personalisation through location modelling

Location base optimal grouping (grouping ad hoc based on mobile location)

Location based adaptation of learning content

Real-life physical objects

Public databases of POIs

QR codes

Wifi and Bluetooth access point identification

Active and passive RFIDs

Surrounding awareness

Learning based on all the surrounding data, context-aware knowledge structures

Identifying specific context-aware knowledge structure among different domains,

Identify learning objectives of real interest to the learner

Propose learning activities to the learner

Lead the learner around the learning environment

Skills and knowledge level detection: competency level, confidence level (evidence-based confidence). For instance using dashboard to get an idea of learning progress,… and what type of skills are affected.

Teachers need to feel that it does not affect their workload, they become more open to these new options.

Question from my end on making learning visible: do you have examples of feedback from the learner that make the actual learning visible.  You mention on how learners learn, but it seems you are more viewing it from a teacher viewpoint, awareness in the learner.
Answer: analytics are coming from a variety of sources and at Austin, Texas, we also work with Codex and MI-dash see the learner progress over time, SCRL which uses self-evaluation, learning initiative design… 

#Mobile #assessment based on self-determination theory of motivation #educon17

Talk given at Educon in Athens, Greece by Stavros Nikou, really interesting mobile learning addition in the area of vocational and learning assessment. Mobile devices in assessment: offer and support new learning pedagogies and new ways of assessment: collaborative and personalised assessments.

Motivation of the framework is aiming to address: following the self-determination theory (http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/) : intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation works from insight of the person, and because it is enjoyable. Extrinsic is build upon reward or punishment. What they try to do is get more intrinsic motivation ignited, as it leads to better understanding and better performance.

There are 3 elements in the theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness all of this impacts the self-determination. This study try to use these three elements to increase intrinsic motivation.

Mobile-based assessment motivational framework: the framework is still in a preliminary phase, but of interest. Autonomy: personalised and adaptive guidance, grouping questions into different difficulty levels (adaptive to learner), location specific – context-aware.

Competence: provide emotional and cognitive feedback that is immediate. Drive students to engage in authentic learning activities, appropriate guidance to support learners.

Preliminary evaluation of the proposed framework: paper based and mobile based assessments used prior and after intervention to test out the framework. Using an experimental design, assessments after each week of formal training, two assessments in total for both groups. ANCOVA data analysis used.

Results: significant difference of autonomy, and competence, and relatedness. The framework will be expanded with additional mobile learning features, and framework will be used with different students. Future research wants to enhance the framework.

The mobile assessment had a social media collaborative element in it, and it also made use of more feedback options due to the technical possibilities that the mLearning option had.

http://conta.uom.gr

Using #learningAnalytics to inform research and practice #educon17

Talk during Educon2017 by Dragan Gasevic known for his award-winning work of his team on the LOCO-Analytics software is considered one of the pioneering contributions in the growing area of learning analytics. In 2014 he founded ProSolo Technologies Inc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACNKw7A_04) that develops a software solution for tracking, evaluating, and recognizing competences gained through self-directed learning and social interactions.

He jumps up the stage with a bouncy step and was in good form to get his talk going.

What he understands under learning analytics is the following: shaping the context of learning analytics results in challenges and opportunities. Developing a lifelong learning journey automatically results in a measuring system that can support and guide the learning experience for individuals.

Active learning also means constant funding, to enable the constant iteration of knowledge, research and tech. But even if you provide new information, there are only limited means to understand who in the room is actually learning something, or not. So addressing the need to get meaningful feedback on what is learned is the basis of learning analytics.

Learning system (e.g. LMS), we also use socio-economic details of individuals

No matter which technologies are used, the interaction with these technologies results in digital footprints. Initially the technologists used the digital footprints as a means to adjust the technology. But gradually natural language processing, learning, meaning creation… also became investigated using these technologies.

Actual applications of learning analytics are given: two well known examples

Course Signals from the Purdue university: analysing the student actions within their LMS (blackboard), different student variables, outcome variables for student risk (high, mediat, low risk) provided by algorithms using the data from the digital footprints of each students. The teachers and students got ‘traffic light’ alerts. Those students they used the signals, had an increase of 10 to 20 percent student success.

Doing a content analysis of using course signals, summative feedback seemed to have much less related to student success, but formative (detailed specific) feedback did have immediate effect on learning success.

University of Michigan E2Coach (top 2 public universities in US). They have large science classrooms, but populated by students with very varied science grade background.

In the E2coach project, they used the idea of ‘better than expected’, so they looked at successful learning patterns: successful students would be adaptive (trying different options to learn), and those who self-organised in peer groups, to enable content structuring.

Top performing students were asked to give pointers on what they did to be successful learners. Those pointers were given to new students to provide them feedback on how they could increase learning success, but at the same time giving them the option to learn (self-determination theory). This resulted in about 5 percent improvement of learner success.

Challenges of learning analytics

Four challenges:

Generalisability: while we are seeing predictive models for student success, but they only extend to what can be generalised. Significance of these models were not too applicable across different context, so the generalisability was quite low. Some indicators seem to be significant predictors, yet in other contexts they are not. So what is the reason behind this. This means we are now collecting massive amounts of MOOC data to look for specific reasons. But this work is difficult, as we need to understand what questions do we need to address.

Student agency: also a challenge. How much of student decisions are made by themselves, but the responsibility of learning is in their hands in their hands.

Common myth in learning analytics: more time spend on tasks, the more they will learn. Actually, this is not the case, more reverse actually. Even time with educators is frequently showing that it is an indicator for poor learner success.

Feedback presentation: we felt that the only way to give feedback is visualisation and dashboards. But many different type of vendors involved in learning analytics look into dashboards. But they sometimes these dashboards are harmful, as the students compared with the class performance, resulting in less student engagement and learning. Students sometimes invested less time as they felt from the dashboards they were doing well, so with less investment less learning.

Investment and willingness to understand: http://he-analytics.com and the SheilaProject  http://sheilaproject.eu/ 50plus senior leaders investigated for their understanding of learning analytics. Institutions hardly provide opportunities to learn what learning analtytics are really about. Lack of leadership on learning analytics, so in many cases they are not sure what it entails, or what to do with it. So that results in buying a product… which does not make sense.

Lack of active engagement of all the stakeholders: students are mostly not involved from day one in development of these learner analytics (no user-centered approach).

Direction for learning analytics

Learning analytics are about learning. So we need to fall back on what we already know about learning, then design certain types of intervention using learning analytics. Learning analytics is more than data science, it provides powerful algorithms, machine learning algorithms, system dynamics… but we are end up into a data crunching problem, as we need Theory (particular approaches: cognitive load, self-regulation), practices also inform where to go. We need to take into account whether these results make sense. Which of the correlations are really meaningful, which make sense… but at the same time e need to take into account learning design and the way we are constructing the learning paths for our students. We cannot ignore experimental design, if we also are using meaningful learning analytics. We need to be very specific about study design. Interaction design is for types of interfaces, but they need to be aligned with pedagogical methods.

How does this result in the challenges mentioned before

Generalisability: if we want to make sure we think about this, we need to take into account that one fits all will never work in learning. Different mission, different population, different models, different legislation.. level of individual courses. Differences in instructional design, different courses need different approaches. It is all about contextual information. So what shapes our engagement? Social networks work only for those called weak ties. Networks with only strong ties restrain full learning success. Data mining can help us to analyse networks: exponential random graphs (not sure here?). Machine learning transfer: using it across different domains. Recent good developments addressing this.

Student agency: back to established knowledge (2006 paper: students use operations and to create artefacts for recall or trying to provide arguments or critical thinking). The student decisions are based on student conditions: prior knowledge, study skills, motivations… all of these conditions need to be taken into account. Identifying sub-groups of learners based on algorithms. Some students are really active, but not productive. Some students were only performing were only mediocre active, yet very good performing in terms of studying. Study skills are changing, priorities are changing during learning… so this means different learning agency. Desirable difficulties need to be addressed and investigated. So no significant success between the highly active and mediocre active students, which needs to be studied to find reasons behind it. Learners motivation changes the most during the day as can be seen from literature. So we need to focus to understand these reasons, and to set up interdisciplinary teams to highlight possible reasons while strongly grounding it in existing theory.

Analytics-based Feedback: students need guidance, not only task specific language indicators. This can be done by semi-automatic teacher triggers to provide more support and guidance, resulting in meaningful feedback used by students. (look up research from Sydney, ask reference Inge). Personalised feedback have a significant effect (Inge, again seen in mobimooc). http://ontasklearning.org

Shall we drop the study of visualization? No, it is significant for study skills, and decision making on analytics, but we need to focus on which methods work and to gradually involve visualisations to know what works, what not. Taylor it to specific tasks, design it in a different way than up till now.

Development of analytics capacity and culture: ethics, privacy concerns, very few faculty really ask students for feedback. What are the key points for developing culture: think about discourse (not only technical specs). We need to understand data, we need to work with IT, using different type of models not only data crunching, start from what we know already, finally transformation: we need to step away from learning analytics as technology, we need to talk to our stakeholders to know how to act, how to do it, who is responsible for certain things, … the process can be inclusive adoption process (look it up). We need to think about questions, design strategies, working on the whole phenomenon we need to involve the students. Students are highly aware of the usefulness of their data.

If we want to be successful with learning analytics we need to work together if we want to make a significant difference or impact.