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Old Lamps - A kind of Learning Analytics in which the genie died - H817 Activity 4 Part 1

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Edited by Steve Bamlett, Wednesday, 8 June 2016, 16:23

o    Campbell et al. (2007), Academic analytics.

o    Norris et al. (2009), A national agenda for action analytics.

·         Consider the reasons for the use of learning analytics that are given in these papers, and reflect on them in relation to the recommendations you and others made in Activity 3 and the problems that you thought learning analytics might be able to address. Make a note in your learning journal or blog.

Notions of ‘actionable intelligence’ emerging out of mass data sets appealed in the world that Tony Blairwas about to  inherit and develop as prime minister. You only had to say ‘Education’ 3 times to show that it was all a matter of intelligence about quantities that could, by the right statistical techniques, be put into the right combination to fire growth. Tony Blair’s ‘modern’ (now gearing itself for power) had as much of Amazon about it as Anthony Giddens. The ‘third way’ was an administrative panacea for mass enlightenment that no longer required fundamental changes in the value systems of individuals or groups The feel of Campbell et. al. (2007:44) is similar:

‘Today, analytics is most often used in HE for administrative decisions – from delivering the targeted number and quality of a freshman class to cultivating likely donors.’

Predictive modelling would work – even though it was still having a hard time showing anything like working in the NHS and support services. A lexical canon of problems required only the right analytic to make them manageable: retention being the buzz word.

By Norris et. al. we had Tony now in Downing Street – modelling himself on Clinton (the male one). The idea of the new that was also even magically a kind of democratisation of process and all by virtue of number-crunching is of a piece with its times. We replaced values with assessment of value (p. 3f) (an amalgam of outcomes expectations, experience of the process and cost.

My note is simple then. No education worth its salt emerges from such a corporate vision. I intend in TMA04 to look at the role of learning analytics as it takes quality back into equation and makes genuine choice and self-regulation possible, even within participatory processes and in large numbers. That is what I’m aiming for in PEAR.


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