Is your VLE cognitive?

As I recall, it was at least  few ago now that I first started to hear the term Student Analytics banded around in the corridors of eLearning, around the time of the 2012 Horizon Report.  For sure the systems that we now use have over time become increasingly attuned to the complexities of student performance tracking, and so  hopefully leveraging that competitive edge realized through analytics for our students. The benefits sited here include such aspects as an improved student experience, increased retention, efficiency cost savings, that can extend even to facilities management.

If you are a Moodle user, then you may be aware of the Learning Analytics dashboard form SmartKlass™. I admit we do not at present actually run this ourselves, but I would be interested in hearing from any of you out there in Moodle land who do, it does seem to be a nicely presented and interfaced product.

While you may be thinking that I am jumping on all this a little on the late in the game, It’s because I recently saw the posting from those people at IBM Research on personalized experiential learning, entitled – The ‘Classroom Will Learn You’

The concept seems to be that soon cloud based education / learning platform systems would be able to collect the vast arrays of student analytic data to alert teachers on intervention techniques and interactive content to address apparent gaps in knowledge. Furthermore the ability to tag student interests need could be used to generate a personalized learning pathway, silver bullet?

On another virtual learning front, I have been enjoying some success with my work in virtual worlds. My project Only Rocket Science was designed for my Level 4 and 5 students, and used the affordances of a virtual world to deliver a situated learning experience. Rather than repeat the details here, you can get a full blog from this link.

That’s all for now, please feel free to comment