Learning Analytics goes to Schools (#LA4Schools)

NOTE: Pre-conference events have been postponed. The new date for the event will be announced soon, once the situation with COVID-19 outbreak is clearer.  

Knowledge transfer for sustainable adoption of learning analytics in schools

 

 

Full-day workshop co-located with LAK20: The 10th international Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference

Supported by Jacobs Foundation

In the past years, we have seen many examples of how the analytics revolution has transformed sectors in society ranging from finance, health, shopping and education.

Learning Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs (Siemens, 2011). Learning Analytics has been primarily targeted to the higher education sector, but adoption in the K-12 sector is growing and there are great opportunities to fundamentally change education practices and establish new ways of teaching and learning for future generations.

However, they also hold the risk that many mistakes will be repeated due to a lack of knowledge transfer. Therefore, the focus of the Learning Analytics goes to Schools workshop (LA4Schools) is designed to transfer best practices and lessoned learned from early adopters of learning analytics in school to school leaders, teachers, data analysts, academics, policymakers, and all other interested parties that need to wisely invest into their educational infrastructure in the coming years. The LA4Schools workshop offers a professional learning and development day focused on the practical applications of Learning Analytics in schools (K-12). Drawing on national and international expertise, speakers include innovative school leaders and teachers, school data analysts, university researchers, software, and consulting companies.

You are warmly invited to join the LA4Schools workshop to learn from experts in the field, and to share your own experiences, insights, and questions.

Participation

The LA4School workshop series is developed for newcomers, as well as for those with some knowledge already about Learning Analytics, and/or who are already using it in classrooms. The LA4School workshop is intended as a workshop with up to 100 participants. Participants will receive a certificate of attendance.

Type of participation

The LA4School workshop will have a mixed participation design, in general, it is an open workshop, but you can also submit your current work and challenges you face for learning analytics in school, and the workshop organizers will take these into account to provide answers to pressing topics. 

Objectives

The objective for participants is to leave with a deeper understanding of:  

1. the diverse forms that Learning Analytics can take, and especially how technology extends this far beyond conventional school data to create better feedback; 
2. how such data is being used by school leaders to support strategic reflection;  
3. how new kinds of data are being used by teachers to support their practice;  
4. the practicalities of initiating such work in one’s own school

Recordings and streaming

The workshop will be live-streamed and recorded as an online reference also after the actual workshop day. Video snippets will be recorded with some of the participants at the workshop to express the challenges and hope they expect with analytics in school. The challenge sessions will be also supported by infographics created on the fly during the challenges session.

Schedule

9:30	Welcome and Initial Remarks  What is “Learning Analytics” and why a Schools Day? Abelardo Pardo, President Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR), University of South Australia, Australia
9:45	Keynote and Expert Speakers What are the key metrics that are effective in improving student participation performance and engagement? Grace Lynch – Independent Consultant and strategic advisor for advanced learning technologies in K-12 for Federal and State Governments in Australia AGORA – Beyond curricula, Learning Analytics as means to structure and document individual learning Guido van Dijk & Jan Fasen, AGORA, Roermond College, Roermond, The Netherlands  Learning Analytics for your personal learning Marcel Schmitz, ZUYD, University of Applied Science, The Netherlands
11:15	Coffee Break
11:45	Roundtable discussions The speakers and additionally invited practitioners will be available for Q&A about their work. Delegates are invited to browse the briefings circulated in advance, and are free to move between groups in ‘unconference’ mode. The discussions will be divided into two topics:  Data for School Strategy and Leadership Decisions. The use of data for school leaders to improve processes, gain insights to inform strategic decisions, etc.  Data to Improve Teaching and Learning. The use of data for day-to-day teaching and learning. Personalizing content, feedback, etc. Design Learning Analytics for your own Teaching. With the help of the LAK20 board game you will enabled to design your own learning analytics concept for your school Specific table from challenges raised by the participants
13:00	Lunch
14:00	Challenges and Lesson for Knowledge Transfer Innovations and Sharing Data to Improve Outcomes Susan Haynes, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, USA Jojo Manai, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, USA Improvement Science & Carnegie: bringing together scholarly and professional knowledge of educational systems and problems of practice to help networked improvement communities break down knowledge barriers/siloes of learning to smooth knowledge transfer across sites/communities CarnegieU virtual courses scaffold learning about improvement science: “Introduction to Networked Improvement Basics,” currently sharing IS methodologies with Joachim Herz Foundation NILS platform catalyses IS work: exemplar of platform of sharing and expertise to help improvers “stand on the shoulders of giants” so that existing information is built upon in improvement efforts, not built again from scratch in every site/effort Challenges: make vulnerability/risk of failure in improvement work psychologically safe Future plans: integration of sites’/projects’ existing platforms/structures with Carnegie platforms for testing and learning
15:30	Coffee Break
16:00	Getting real. What conditions make learning analytics work at school? Small group discussions to envision how these techniques can be effectively deployed in schools.
16:30	Closing Panel: From Vision to Reality Closing reflections on the day from the experts and open discussion Jan Fasen, Guido van Dijk, Susan Haynes, Jojo Manai and Grace Lynch
17:00	Networking, Refreshments, Informal conversations

Workshop costs & registration

This workshop is complimentary thanks to support from the Jacobs Foundation. To receive your discount code you must complete a short questionnaire providing the organizers with important information regarding the following:

• Your Subject Matter
• Your School/Organization
• The challenges you are facing within your school and how you think Learning Analytics may play a role

Once the questionnaire has been submitted (please use this form) and reviewed, conference organisers will provide you with a discount code prior to March 1, 2020. 

Participation is limited so please submit your questionnaires as soon as possible to reserve your spot in this important workshop. 

Note: If the participation limit is reached, priority will be given to K-12 educators

Location & travel information

The LA4Schools workshop will take place at Campus Westend, Goethe University Frankfurt, “Germanys most beautiful campus”. Please see the LAK20 website for more information about the Goethe University and your travel options to Frankfurt. 

Curious about learning analytics?

If you want to learn more about learning analytics, we warmly recommend you to join the LAK20 pre-conference workshops on Tuesday and/or the LAK20 conference. You will meet more than 400 international learning analytic experts and have an excellent platform for further discussions. For more information, see the LAK20 conference website.

In addition, feel free to explore the Society for Learning Analytics Research’s website to find important resources, such as the Learning Analytics Handbook, Podcasts, Webinars and other publications to provide an overview to Learning Analytics prior to the workshop. 

Questions?

Please let us know if you need more information. We will be happy to answer your questions.Contact: lakconference@gmail.com

Workshop Chairs

Abelardo Pardo

President Society for Learning Analytics Research

Abelardo Pardo is Professor and Dean Academic at the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment at the University of South Australia. His research interests include the design and deployment of technology to increase the understanding and improve digital learning experiences. More specifically, his work examines the areas of learning analytics, personalized active learning, and technology for student support. He is the author of over 150 research papers in scholarly journals and international conferences in educational technology and engineering education.

Susan Haynes

Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching

Susan Haynes is the partner success manager for the Carnegie Foundation’s collaborative
technology team. She provides product development support, partnership management, and
technical assistance for various products and platforms developed by Carnegie for faculty and community partners. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2016, she worked as a legal and policy assistant in the Silicon Valley’s tech sector, specializing in print and digital copyrights. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University, where she specialized in creative writing and Shakespearean studies.

Jojo Manai

Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching

Jojo Manai is a senior associate managing director for collaborative technology at the Carnegie Foundation. He leads the technical team to provide Foundation-wide support for a variety of technology, including the development and administration of an information infrastructure for the Carnegie Foundation’s Design, Development & Improvement Research work, as well as the development of technology solutions for a wide range of collaboration tools to facilitate the work of Carnegie’s programs. Before coming to the Carnegie Foundation, Jojo was a search technical lead & project manager at Yahoo! where he supported rich results direct display, query pattern mining, intent analysis and impact prediction. He holds degrees in computer science and information technology from the Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion – Sfax University. In the summer of 2005 he was awarded The UC Davis Citations for Excellence and Achievement Award, as an acknowledgment of his achievements and quality of work at the University of California Davis.

Hendrik Drachsler

Professor und Arbeitsbereichsleiter Educational Technologies

Hendrik is the Head of the Educational Technologies Unit within the Department Information
Centre for Education at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education which delivers empirical educational research, digital infrastructure and targeted knowledge
transfer, thus contributing to coping with challenges in education.

Grace Lynch

Keynote Sprecherin

Professor Grace Lynch (BA, BEd, MEd, PhD) has over 35 years of educational management
experience in Australasia, Singapore and Canada. During her career, she has gained practical academic expertise while teaching at the primary, secondary, college and university levels. Professor Lynch, an international scholar and highly regarded consultant, has chaired many management and review committees and contributed widely to advisory boards and most recently was the interim Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor Education for RMIT University.

Professor Lynch’s advice on educational underpinnings – the theory, rationale and analytics behind practice and planned outcomes – is crucial in the digital age where technology is both an enabler and driver of pedagogical change and has been an invited speaker in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. She has published over 120 proceedings, articles, book chapters and books.
Grace developed and managed a tutorial teaching model for fully online undergraduate courses to improve student learning outcomes, including professional development and mentoring of over 140 tutors, in 34 courses with over 22,000 students. She has been responsible for managing design, development and production service groups in the provision of leadership and assistance to schools, faculties and colleges in developing courses and programs for online, blended and face-to-face learning environments. These activities assist schools and universities in strengthening the scholarship of learning and teaching while providing public dissemination and critique of experiences around the changing nature of teaching and learning.

Grace has worked extensively in both K-12 and higher education sectors and was a member of the Education & Training Research Panel for the Office of Learning and Teaching, Victoria State Government Department of Education and Training for over 10 years. She was the author of a background paper for Office of Strategy and Review in Department of Education and Training for the Victorian State Government on Schools in 2020 which included rural, regional and Indigenous schools.

Marcel Schmitz

Marcel Schmitz is working for more than 16 years in Higher Education at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in the South of the Netherlands. His career at Zuyd started as a Technical Support Engineer and Developer on the learning management system and soon he began to implement and develop several learning enhancing technologies. In 2007 Marcel started to combine his support job, with a job as technology enhanced learning advisor for all faculties at Zuyd and a teaching role at Zuyd Faculty of Information and Communication Technology. In 2009 Marcel became a team coordinator of the Informatics department. In 2012 he was part of a team of educational coordinators that implemented a new study at the faculty. From 2016 he is working as a researcher at the Zuyd research center of data intelligence and as an external PhD at the Open University of The Netherlands. The research is on Learning analytics supported learning design.

Guido van Dyk

Guido van Dijk has been active in the education sector since 1996. He started his teaching career as a teacher of mathematics and computer science. In 2013, he is one of the developers of the innovative Agora education concept at Niekée School in Roermond, the Netherlands, where students of a public school learn without a curriculum. After working as a coach for several years, he is now exploring the effects of agile learning and transitions to other radical forms of education. Since 2019, he has been employed part-time as Praktor Cloud-engineering in Rotterdam, where he organises the professionalisation of teachers in cooperation with the business world.