Towards Open Architectures and Interoperability for Learning Analytics

Tore HoelOslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Norway

Institutional Readiness Day, Amsterdam - 2015-12-10

LACE Reports on Interoperability and Data Sharing

Quick Guides to who is doingstandards and what standardsshould be considered

New Report on Interoperability and Data Sharing: Requirements, Specification,Adoption and Practice

What are the keys to make LA work?

• Access to data• Institutional strategies• Good predictive models• Engagement and trust among students and faculty• Interoperability standards• Well designed tools

What is the stumbling block?

Lack of trust

The Learning Analytics Landscape

What standards are needed?

An architecture for learning analytics

Which pedagogical scenariosare we able to accommodate in an Open LA Architecture?

Characteristics of Educational Big Data

• Grain size of recordable and analysable data has become smaller– every pen stroke, every keystroke is recorded

• Sources of evidence are (more) varied– tests, essay scoring, learning games, social interactions, affects,

body sensors, intelligent tutors, simulations, semantic mapping, LMS data…

– Unstructured (e.g., . log files, clicks, timestamps)– When structured different schemas are used

• How do we bring these data together to form a overall view of an individual learner or a cohort of learners?

(Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M., 2015)

What data practices are emerging?

• Multi-scalar Data Collection– Embedded, simultaneous collection of data that can be used

for different purposes at different scales– Semantically legible datapoint (learner-actionable feedback):

«teachable moment»• Self-describing, structured data meanings immediately evident ➔

to learners, teachers, others• Sample size n= all• Data and interventions are not separate: Recursive micro

intervention result redesign cycles ➔ ➔• More widely distributed data collection roles

(Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M., 2015)

Need for new Education Data Standards supporting Learning Analytics• Harmonization of Activity Stream Specifications (ADL xAPI, IMS

Caliper, W3C Activity Streams)• Building Vocabularies – Profiles – Recipes – Communities of

Practice• Storage designs – centralised data warehouses or distributed

Learning Record/Event Stores• Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) tools for data storage

• Privacy and Data Protection – how to do Privacy-by-design in this field?

• Sharing of Algorithms and Predictive Models

Challenges for standardisation

• Privacy and Data Ownership issues – how to turn these «soft» requirements into «hard» ones?

• The role of Personal Data Stores in Learning Analytics• Harmonization of data schemes prior to analysis• Import / export facilities with ontology building (and automatic

reasoning technologies) as part of the storage solutions • Publishing and Sharing of data for research and comparison and

testing of predictive models, student models, etc.

Challenges of design of new interoperable solutions• Understanding the processes• Understanding where the data come from• Piloting new solutions• Working with standards organisations to ensure interoperability

• Industry consortia• Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)• IMS Global Learning• Apereo

• Formal standardisation • ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC36 Working Group 8 on Learning Analytics • CEN?

Initial understanding of LA process ( ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC36/WG8)

Draft figure from new LA Framework model

Updated understanding of LA process (SC36/WG8)

Draft figure from new LA Framework model

A European Agenda for LA Interoperability?

• European requirements?• xAPI and IEEE – the European stumbling block• IMS Caliper – US vendor centric development

• Who will provide leadership in standardisation in Europe?• CEN instruments are put on hold• No pan-European instruments for harmonisation in LA

• JISC OLAA is a trail blazer for exploring this field and provide leadership for Higher Ed in a particular country

• SOLAR and Apereo Foundation offer opportunities for collaboration between research community and standards experts

Hoel, T. (2015). Towards Open Architectures and Interoperability for Learning Analytics. Presentation at Institutional Readiness Days, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2015-12-10

The European LACE project builds a Community of Interest on Learning Analytics – check out laceproject.eu

tore.hoel@hioa.no @tore

This work was undertaken as part of the LACE Project, supported by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme, grant 619424.

These slides are provided under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Some images used may have different licence terms.

www.laceproject.eu@laceproject