A Call for Third-Order Change in Learning Analytics

[Disclaimer: It’s summer time, meaning time for some bold statements.] “Any educational intervention, for the obvious, common-sense reasons mentioned above, can do harm… ignoring side effects is one of the main reasons for the perpetual wars and pendulum swings in education.” — Yong Zhao (2018) Education often turns to other disciplines for inspirations. In medicine, precision medicine “takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person” when treating diseases.

Automate for Whom?

I have been working at a large public R1 university long enough – 4 years – to witness steady changes with technology installed in public restrooms. Below is a newly installed automatic paper towel dispenser in our office building. As someone who tends to use 1 paper towel, I was very frustrated by the design that doesn’t keep me – a user – in the loop and forces me to use that much paper.

#LAK19 Conference Report [Part 2]: Main Conference

(This is the second part of a report of the #LAK19 conference. See Part 1 here.) It was the only beginning of many fun conversations when the Main Conference kicked off on Wednesday! Our conference and program chairs delivered an exciting welcome message. LAK is becoming larger, Largest LAK ever & 60% attendees are 1st timers! - shared by conference chair @shoha99 #LAK19 pic.twitter.com/k7C02NGWol — Bodong Chen (@bod0ng) March 6, 2019 but still selective – with a 33% acceptance rate for Full and Short papers.

#LAK19 Conference Report [Part 1]: Pre-Conference Workshops

I just came back from the 2019 Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) conference hosted by Arizona State University. This conference, surely one of my favorites, is inching to its 10th anniversary next year. I still remember when I was in the 2nd year of my PhD in 2010, Chris Teplovs told me about an exciting, upcoming gathering of 60~ people in Banff, Canada to discuss a thing called “learning analytics.”

#OAWeek 2018: My Personal Journey

This week is the Open Access Week 2018. Yesterday we spent some time during a student advising meeting talking about the what and why of Open Access. The Open Access Week website has provided a great list of ideas for researchers to get involved in Open Access. My own institution does have an Open Access policy. Our univeristy library system also provides support for Open Access including an Open Access Publishing Fund, a Digital Conservancy system, a Research Data Repository, etc.