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Learning analytics treats students as numbers, invades privacy, and doesn’t elevate education. Originally published in IT Web 4 April 2003

When I was about 6 months old, my well-meaning and sleep-deprived parents bought me an indispensable and comprehensive education technology:  the multivolume, all-inclusive reference source known as the Encyclopædia Britannica. The salesman convinced them that this “august repository of serious information”, organized alphabetically by topic and arranged over 26 volumes, had an impeccable pedigree, an excellent reputation and a history of trustworthiness. The pitch worked.  The “robust intellectual content” of the Encyclopædia Britannica was theirs and my cash- strapped parents spent the next two years paying off their first education technology purchase.

Today, education technologies offer the 21st century parent, similarly concerned about their children’s educational future, an almost infinite number of learning opportunities. From the World Wide Web to Wikipedia, from Moodle to MOOCs, this century has embraced the interwebs as the new “multivolume, all inclusive reference source”.  The rich collections of data associated with these “learning opportunities” are starting to interest educational entrepreneurs who see rich pickings in the process of analyzing data and packaging it in sets of marketable information. Much like Amazon is able to look through all my online purchases and suggest a new good read, or Facebook is able to suggest friends by determining the degrees of separation between me and the rest of the world, the computational process of discovering patterns in large educational data sets (data mining) is being touted by educational entrepreneurs as a solution for group work, career choices, retention rates and a higher quality, personalized experience.

Learning analytics is the current all-encompassing term used to describe this marriage between big data and educational records. Collecte data about students is being used to create models that will predict student progress and performance; and allow parents, students, teachers and administrators the ability to act on that information.

 Somewhere, probably in Silicon Valley, there’s a company or two coding an app that will collect all available data about students, including academic records, ANA test scores, financial circumstances, geographic location, attendance, assignments, progress, discipline, demographics and health. This company will soon be contacting your school or university IT administrator, claiming to offer counselling by aggregated data-mining.

Big data is hooking up with school reporting and Learning Analytics is their new love child. My guess is that the people coding this app do not have many educators on the design team. As Encyclopaedia Britannica was a sales-driven company, and not a scholarly one, data miners are looking at data as their source of profits. The absence of educators might make coders think that they are thinking outside of the box, but it is more likely that the absence of expertise or research will lead to an app that exacerbates current educational problems.  

My family’s Britannica sat on its own shelf in the lounge for years, and was used for the occasional school project, resolving points of debate and pressing flowers. Learning analytics may not be as benign. Learner analytics also comes at the expense of teacher-engagement.  Increasingly  stats- bound schools purchasing an app as described above will allow teachers to monitor what  is happening from their desk instead of taking the opportunity to engage in student learning and questions, coaching, facilitating and getting to know their learners.

 Education is more than the collection of patterns of data. Learning analytics may promise unlimited and useful information on students, but treating students as numbers invades privacy and doesn’t elevate education. It could lead to a watered-down, prescriptive education system with little human or humanising engagement.

Encyclopaedia  Britannica’s ubiquity was because the company was built by  “a culture of salesmen, not scholars”. With the likes of iPads, the Khan Academy and MOOCs, , I suspect that many parents, teachers, schools and faculties will soon also find themselves  under siege from similar Britannica- like salesmen, this time straight from Silicon Valley.  Their new pitch is an appealing one. They tell you that you can choose to use the data generated by learning analytics to improve the quality of your students’ prospects or you can remain disconnected and disadvantage your students prospects.

There’s no doubt that we need to make a serious effort to understand the processes of learning in our 21 century world. Learning analytics, however, cannot begin to reflect the complexity of these learning processes. Education cannot be reduced to a set of data patterns. Putting our faith in educational entrepreneurs’ ability to create another “august repository of serious information” is very much like my parents’ well intentioned choice to buy a Britannica.

The wheels of Wits take a while to turn…but a decision has been made. Wits is going to move from KEWL  and WebCT to Sakai. A copy of the press release is below.

At the Senate meeting on the 10th of November, Prof Ballim, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, formally announced Wits’ decision to adopt Sakai as the new electronic learning environment at Wits. According to Tessa Murray, project manager in charge of this transition from Web CT to Sakai, the project is on track and the process of installing, configuring and customising Sakai is almost complete. Launching, implementing and supporting a replacement for WebCT by the end of 2012 will be a challenge for the next year, but eLSI (elearning, Support and Innovation) – the unit charged with replacing the current Learning Management System – is putting together road shows, presentations, workshops, training programmes and online support to ensure that Wits is ready for the new system.
The decision to adopt Sakai has involved extensive consultations, conversations and meetings. After a comprehensive study, undertaken in 2008, to consider the feasibility of both open source and proprietary alternatives to WebCT, the Senior Executive Team (SET) recommended that Wits adopt an open source approach platform. Following this approval, the University also took the decision not to renew the WebCT license after 2011 and began to explore its options regarding a campus-wide implementation of an open-source Learning Management System (LMS).

In early 2011, the Working Group concluded the evaluation and recommended that Wits adopt the Sakai collaboration and learning environment (CLE) as its eLearning platform. The recommendation was based on: the functional advantage of Sakai over other LMS solutions; the suitability of the Sakai technology in respect of established criteria; the initial and ongoing costs; the viability of the Sakai track record, user-base and pedagogy and technical support community; and the sustainability of the platform for Wits’ teaching, learning and research goals. In July 2011, the Wits SET approved the recommendation.

“Throughout 2012, Wits will run both WebCT and Sakai in parallel,” said Fatima Rahiman, lead learning designer at eLSI. Rahiman and other members of eLSI have been working in association with faculty nominated representatives in the Sakai Working Group to ensure that the new environment is ready for WebCT users to shift seamlessly over Sakai. In addition to ensuring parity with WebCT, faculty representatives and staff from other University units such as the library, Central Networking Services and SIMS have been drawn into discussion about the development of new functionalities – scheduled for 2013.

In the new year and over the first semester, staff from eLSI will be updating academics about the Sakai migration via Wits Clips articles, training sessions and meetings with individual faculty members and groups. If faculty have questions about Sakai or want to take a lead in the migration of their courses, Rahiman said that they should contact her or visit http://elearn.wits.ac.za to find out more.

Deadlines are tight. The WebCT license expires at the end of 2012. eLSI has got a year to familiarize academics with the new learning environment,  migrate existing courses accross from KEWL and WebCT and train academics on Sakai.

As one of the last of the generation of white South Africans, who were conscripted to a wasted two years in the “”defense force”, the term “bootcamp” doesn’t site well with me. It conjures up an image of drilled troops, marching around while, a buzz cut officer barks orders to compliant recruits. Instead of creating the impression of an intensive in person course where a student can learn specific skills and get a job in a few months. I have the impression of to crude attempts to instill army discipline. with recruits only permitted to offer yes and no sir responses to any question.

While I don’t want to suggest that the current coding skills arrangements should be compared to apartheid armed forces. But I do want to enquire whether a “bootcamp”  is the best label to use when describing an attempt to address an anticipated coding skills shortfall? Might we avoid militaristic stereotypes (which don’t really sit very well with the average mild mannered computer geek). And stop think of this as a drilling event by army instructors, intnded to induct you into their “killing machine”?

Instead of framing these skills events as a bootcamp, might we find a metaphor that would help with the creation of more inclusive and equitable opportunities to help under represented groups to learn new skills. Find a gentler way to raise their awareness and address exclusionary stereotypes. To grow a coding community, who has been previously excluded, that seeks to erode and break the barriers that previously prevented them from making advanced use of their computers. To develop among attendees a growing in interest and confidence in their ability, without the need for drills, barked orders or military discipline.