Learning Analytics Summer Institute

Marist College Student Center.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although this is really short notice on my part, I like to post professional development opportunities on this blog to help support our faculty and instructional designers. I have been interested in learning analytics since I was up in Washington State at Tacoma Community College where we started working with the Angel learning management system. At the time, it seemed to have a lot of analytics capabilities built in. I continued that work at College of the Redwoods where we partnered with Josh Baron at Marist College and participated in a Next Generation Learning Challenges learning analytics grant. Here is the latest from Stanford this summer:

George Siemens posted this to his blog:

"...Next week, we (SoLAR, IEDMS and others) are organizing a Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI). A call for attendance was held earlier this year and the event was/is (massively) oversubscribed. We were only able to accept 100 attendees due to space and cost constraints. Since then, we have heard from numerous disappointed individuals. In response, LASI is organizing a series of local events and live-streamed keynotes.

We have an outstanding program:

Monday, July 1, 2013
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013

How to join us:

1. Information on joining the live stream: http://lasionline.ning.com/blog/tuning-into-stanford-webcasts.
2. Join the LASI Ning
3. Join any of our local LASI events from around the world
4. Join the distributed conversation on Twitter/your blog/wherever: #LASI13

Related articles

• Join us: Stanford Learning Analytics Summer Institute (elearnspace.org)
• Learning analytics, intervention and helping teachers (davidtjones.wordpress.com)
• Learning Analytics from "Brainstorm in Progress" 

Innovations in Academic Advising: A Sakai CLE for Academic Advisors and Advisees

Image by glemak via Flickr

Dr. Mark A. Van Dyke, Associate Professor School of Communication and the Arts Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 (845) 575-3000, ext. 2679 mark.vandyke @marist.edu

Abstract:
Marist College has completed a one-year pilot of a CLE-based site for academic advisors and student advisees. This site, created with Marist's iLearn (Innovative Learning and Research Network) brand of Sakai, integrates a full suite of Sakai tools. These tools create a highly-interactive online community that has greatly enhanced virtual communication, collaboration, file management, and innovation in the academic advising process for one advisor and more than 50 of his academic advisees. The Marist model of this collaboration site supports academic advising for an on-the-ground bachelor's in communication program and a fully-online master's program in communication. It also supports advising between master's candidates and thesis committee members, provides tutorials and other instructional resources for new advisees, and connects students who are studying abroad with the academic advisor and other students who consider study-abroad programs. Hence, this site can serve the needs of traditional and non-traditional students and academic advisors in a wide variety of situations by offering the flexibility, power, and the openness of Sakai's product.

He developed a project site around Marist Collaborative Learning Constellation.

http://openedpractices.org

Sakai and innovation in academic advising

"If academic advisors want to reach their advisees, and their advisees are living in a digital world, then advisors need to become part of that world as well."

Elements of virtual academic advising include fast, efficient, flexible, powerful, and open. He saw Sakai as a good fit for this.

Used the U.S National Academic Advisting Association Guidelines for Web-based advising.

The course site used most of the tools in Sakai. The academic community of advisors and advisees could benefit from the same collaborative learning environment as the teachers and students. He creates specific groups for specific needs. All the links advisors need to calendars and schedules are in the side-bar. One of the most popular tools is the wiki. He also uses Twitter. He uses an online sign-up sheet as needed via the wiki tool. He also used web conferencing to meet with students.

In the wiki, the students are able to update information about the college as things change.

The feedback from advisees is pretty significant: they visit his site more often than students would typically visit their advisor.

Students are enrolled in the site manually. The advisors get a list of their students.

He is able to virtually meet with students and determine if he can answer their questions quickly or if their situation is more complicated and he can then schedule an appointment. He says that the virtual site enhances face-to-face contact rather than replacing it.

Sakai 2010, Innovations in Academic Advising

View more presentations from Mark Van Dyke.