Learning Analytics - What Does It Mean?

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

- Glenn Greenwald

I recently attended the Learning Analytics Summer Institute sponsored by SoLAR (the Society for Learning Analytics Research) and EDM (the International Educational Data Mining organization). The event was very well organized and extremely informative, with thought-provoking panels and in-depth workshops.

I was there presenting a poster about my dissertation research. I'm interested in how students use Internet-based knowledge resources for research and learning, and I am exploring the learner x resource networks that emerge to see if the patterns of resources used can tell us anything about how well the students are learning or how effectively they're making use of those resources. To my mind, that topic fits right in with the concept of Learning Analytics, where Analytics is defined as "a method of logical analysis." The organizers of the event seemed to agree, as doctoral students had to apply and were accepted based on the applicability of the workshop to their research and vice versa.

Apparently, though, some people had a very different definition of Learning Analytics. One person asked, on the afternoon of the first day of the workshop (and after the graduate students had done a 1-minute overview of their research and presented their posters during lunch), about methods to keep out impostors. Yes, that's the actual term used. This person suggested that there were people at the workshop who could not "do" learning analytics and suggested implementing badges that could only be obtained by passing rigorous tests. (My assumption is that this person was actually focusing only on educational data mining techniques, and not on the more broad field of Learning Analytics.)

George Siemens (@gsiemens) did an excellent job of responding to this question (and veiled criticism). Dr. Siemens stated that he was well aware that there was a tension between the different fields represented at the workshop, but that he felt that tension was an asset that led to innovations and the growth of the field. I agree wholeheartedly. The best part of the workshop was the variety of research and the exchange of ideas between all participants.

If, as researchers, we want to be silo'ed and only talk to others who have the same expertise as we do, then we will miss out on new opportunities, novel collaborations, and innovative explorations. If "impostors" can bring new ideas to the table, then they should be welcomed instead of weeded out. I applaud Dr. Siemens for his tact as well as his understanding that, in this networked age, creating silos of expertise is a recipe for isolation.

Gender, Gender Everywhere...

If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind.

- Emilie du Chatelet, 18th c. translator of Newton

I recently attended Gender Summit 3 North America (GS3NA) in Washington, D.C. It was an amazing experience being surrounded by the best and brightest from all of North America and hearing about women's struggles and accomplishments.

After returning from the conference, I've suddenly been noticing more and more items in the media discussing not only women in STEM but also programs encouraging girls to consider careers in STEM.

For example, this is an ad for GoldieBlox toys. Great name, but an even better commercial. Girls rejecting the pink princess paradigm and building a Rube Goldberg machine. Check it out.

Similarly, a Catholic girls school has created an ad campaign telling girls, You are not a princess. Girls shouldn't sit around waiting for their Prince Charming to come and save them - they're perfectly capable of saving themselves. Exactly!

I hope to keep seeing more and more efforts like this. I hope girls realize that STEM fields are fun, exciting, and challenging. If they want to be princesses, at least they can be strong, independent princesses who may very well end up rescuing Prince Charming and not the other way around.

Gender Bias in Action!

I think the worst woman who ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation - they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.

- Lord Byron

Yesterday I found out that I am the recipient of the 2013-2014 Dr. Constance Murray Scholarship at NJIT. Dr. Murray was the Dean of Students and an advocate for diversity and gender equity, and it's an honor to be selected for this scholarship that celebrates women in technology! I posted a status update on Facebook about the scholarship and exchanged some comments with my uncle who asked what I was studying. When I told him I was working towards a PhD in Information Systems with a focus on human-computer interaction, I received a stunning reply stating, "I would not have guessed. I bet you get help from your hubby."

It's both sad and disturbing that such attitudes still exit. The implication is that I couldn't possibly be attaining a PhD in a technical field without help from my husband. Don't get me wrong - my husband is my staunch supporter who helps me keep my eye on the prize when things get tough. But Harry is not involved in my studies or my research at all.

I didn't know how to respond to my uncle after that comment. Of course my husband thought it was very funny and commented how behind every great woman there's a great man... But I just don't know how to respond to my uncle, or to the others who think that women can't "do science" or that women with families can't possibly do the work required for a PhD. In fact, in the essay that was part of my application for the scholarship, I mentioned how I actually overheard a professor saying "Women with children can't do this program." And that comment spurred me to maintain a 4.0 GPA throughout my studies just to prove those kinds of people wrong.

So I'll keep working, and if people want to think I'm only succeeding because of my husband or some other man in the background, I can't stop them. But anyone who knows me knows that this work has all been mine, the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, and that I'll keep plugging until I get my PhD and can look that professor in the eye and show him that women, and in particular women with family obligations, can be successful students, professors, scientists, engineers, and whatever else they choose to be.

Statistics and Skewed Samples

An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.

- Andrew Lang

I've recently been doing statistical tests on coauthorship data we collected through our NSF Advance grant at New Jersey Institute of Technology. We're looking at questions such as gender differences and models for success in terms of promotion and rank.

The problem is that we have very few female faculty at NJIT. This is a problem endemic to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (what many call STEM). Women either choose not to go into those fields, or once in them, they leave. Often they leave because of harsh or hostile environments from colleagues, which is why we are hoping to see if women are excluded from the critical collegial social networks within the technological university setting.

Statistical tests rely on random samples of a population. In this case, however, we are sampling the entire population, but a population that is very heavily skewed towards male faculty. In looking at Associate Professors over a 10 year period, we do not have enough female faculty to even begin to assume a normal distribution. That then begs the question of how we can test our hypotheses regarding the exclusion of women when so few women even exist in our sample?

It's a quandary we're still trying to solve. We're trying various means (permutation tests, bootstrapping) but we may have to resort to simple qualitative descriptions. We're also using social network analysis methods to look for homophily in coauthorships - that is, do men prefer to coauthor with men and women prefer to coauthor with women, or is there also ample inter-gender collaboration? Results will hopefully be forthcoming.

Measuring Influence on Social Media

The brain is a commodity used to fertilize ideas.

- Elbert Hubbard

Social network analysis is a hot field these days. Exploring people's connections can tell us a lot, not just about those people but about the networks within which they live and work.

Recent research is focusing on how to measure the influence of individuals through social network analysis methods. I invite you to take a look at this upcoming conference:

Measuring Influence on Social Media

The conference is currently soliciting position papers and research-in-progress posters, due by June 15.

I encourage anyone interested in this exciting field to submit a paper or poster or attend the two-day conference in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia.

You could win a $50 gift card

As part of my PhD studies, a fellow student and I are conducting a survey of Facebook users. One out of every 100 respondents will win a $50 gift card. To participate, please click on the link below.

Facebook Privacy Survey

The survey should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Please pass this information along to any of your fellow Facebook users. Below is our official text requesting participation.

Please participate in an online survey conducted by two PhD students (Regina Collins and Harshada Shrivastav, under the direction of Profs. Roxanne Hiltz and Cathy Dwyer) for their research project. The purpose is to study the concerns of Facebook users related to recent changes in privacy policies and features. We think you will find the survey itself to be interesting and thought-provoking.

We estimate that it will take you approximately 15 minutes to complete the survey. All information will be kept confidential and will be used only for research purposes. If you are a Facebook user and 18 years of age or over, please click on the link below, or copy and paste the entire URL into your browser to access the survey:

Facebook Privacy Survey

The deadline to complete this survey is December 1, 2011. Please note that you may win a $50 gift card from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com as we will draw one person at random for each 100 people who complete it.

Please also pass on this survey link to all your friends. We highly appreciate your time and efforts.

_________________
Information Systems, New Jersey Institute of Technology

323 Martin Luther King Boulevard

Newark, NJ

Success - and Learning from Failure

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.

- Sven Goran Eriksson

Well, what a ride! I started out in January of this year proposing to do a Master's thesis as part of my degree in Professional and Technical Communication. As part of my thesis, I developed a web-based application for the assessment of student portfolios by a community of readers. Keep in mind that I hadn't programmed since my undergrad days at NJIT (25 years ago!) and so I was faced with the daunting task of becoming proficient at HTML, learning PHP, and learning MySQL. All this in the course of a few weeks so that I could actually develop the application and have it finished in time to perform usability testing and complete my thesis.

This wasn't just a theoretical application, mind you. I had to ensure that the application actually worked because it was going to be put to full use on May 13th of 2010 when the freshmen-level writing professors would be using it to score approximately 80 student portfolios.

I was terrified the night before the actual portfolio assessment session. I had visions of the application crashing and burning in all its glory. I had tested it as much as possible during development, but that's nowhere near the same as putting it out there for 20 or more professors to use in real time.

So was it a success? Yes! Did it have problems? Yes! I realized that the way I had implemented adjudications did not work based on the way the application was actually used, so I have already started to redesign that part of the application. But in general, the application performed beautifully.

So what does this all mean? It means that perseverance and the development of knowledge are just as important to defining success as a positive outcome. The application did not work flawlessly, but there were no recriminations from the professors - there were suggestions of how to make the application better, there was increased knowledge and understanding on my part, and all those factors together point to the fact that the entire experience was a success.

In fact, it was such a success that I have now graduated from NJIT with my Master of Science in Professional and Technical Communication, and I am subsequently applying for admission to NJIT's PhD program in Information Systems. I'm sure that experience will generate even more posts to this blog, so wish me luck!