Multidisciplinarity vs. Multivocality, the case of "Learning Analytics"

Session : Reflections on learning analyticsInternational audienceIn this paper, we consider an analysis of the TeLearn archive, of the Grand Challenges from the STELLAR Network of Excellence, of two Alpine Rendez-Vous 2011 workshops and research conducted in the Productive Multivocality initiative in order to discuss the notions of multidisciplinarity, multivocality and interidisciplinarity. We use this discussion as a springboard for addressing the term "Learning Analytics" and its relation to "Educational Data Mining". Our goal is to launch a debate pertaining to what extent the different disciplines involved in the TEL community can be integrated on methodological and theoretical levels

Towards Visual Analytics for Teachers’ Dynamic Diagnostic Pedagogical Decision-Making

The focus of this paper is to delineate and discuss design considerations for supporting teachers\u27 dynamic diagnostic decision-making in classrooms of the 21st century. Based on the Next Generation Teaching Education and Learning for Life (NEXT-TELL) European Commission integrated project, we envision classrooms of the 21st century to (a) incorporate 1:1 computing, (b) provide computational as well as methodological support for teachers to design, deploy and assess learning activities and (c) immerse students in rich, personalized and varied learning activities in information ecologies resulting in high-performance, high-density, high-bandwidth, and data-rich classrooms. In contrast to existing research in educational data mining and learning analytics, our vision is to employ visual analytics techniques and tools to support teachers dynamic diagnostic pedagogical decision-making in real-time and in actual classrooms. The primary benefits of our vision is that learning analytics becomes an integral part of the teaching profession so that teachers can provide timely, meaningful, and actionable formative assessments to on-going learning activities in-situ. Integrating emerging developments in visual analytics and the established methodological approach of design-based research (DBR) in the learning sciences, we introduce a new method called Teaching Analytics and explore a triadic model of teaching analytics (TMTA). TMTA adapts and extends the Pair Analytics method in visual analytics which in turn was inspired by the pair programming model of the extreme programming paradigm. Our preliminary vision of TMTA consists of a collocated collaborative triad of a Teaching Expert (TE), a Visual Analytics Expert (VAE), and a Design-Based Research Expert (DBRE) analyzing, interpreting and acting upon real-time data being generated by students\u27 learning activities by using a range of visual analytics tools. We propose an implementation of TMTA using open learner models (OLM) and conclude with an outline of future work

Publication trends and interdisciplinary collaboration across the archaeological science/humanities-divide: Investigations into the epistemological structure of the archaeological discipline

The present master thesis is an article-based dissertation, comprising two individual research papers and an introductory essay. Both papers correspond to a shared set of overarching aims: 1. To investigate the composition and state of archaeological epistemology, focusing on comparability and integration between sub-fields of the archaeological discipline. 2. To better understand the potential impact of the science/humanities-divide upon archaeological practice in publishing and applied epistemology in research strategies. These aims are mostly examined separately in the two papers. When put together, the main ambition is to provide a deeper understanding of the relation between the structure and properties of archaeological epistemology and diverse practice (within archaeology and in interdisciplinary cooperation), as influenced by the science/humanities-divide. "Measuring incommensurability: A bibliometric inquiry into what papers are presented in archaeological journals (2009-13), and the epistemic consequences" This paper presents the results of bibliometric analyzes conducted on a data set consisting of 926 archaeological papers. The data comprises all original research papers published in six top ranking archaeological journals in the period 2009-2013. The included journals are taken to represent different sub-fields in archaeology: Historical, anthropological, social, scientific, environmental and general archaeology. The aim is to map general features of archaeological publishing. Significant differences are identified amongst the journals on an array of parameters, covering journal statistics, citation network, thematic distribution, the application of methods and the direction of relevance to other sub-fields. Furthermore, the paper engages in an extended discussion over the epistemological consequences of the bibliometric results, focusing on disciplinary fragmentation, incommensurability, vagueness and the purported significance of the science/humanities-divide. "Identifying key factors affecting the two cultures -relation of archaeology – Outlining a common epistemological platform for archaeology and archaeometry" In relating to the debate over the nature of archaeology along the science/humanities-spectrum, this paper seeks to understand some epistemological challenges arising from integrating scientific methodologies with archaeology. The main objective is to evaluate what epistemological platform might integrate archaeology and archaeometry in interdisciplinary research projects, and how such a platform might provide productive interdisciplinary research strategies. Four epistemic factors at individual levels are examined, consisting of 1) communication, 2) specialization, 3) explanatory ideals and 4) uncertainty levels and types. A model of interdisciplinary research strategies is put forth in order to cope with these epistemic challenges. The opposing results of stable isotope analysis and faunal remains regarding diet during the Mesolithic/Neolithic-transition are presented as a case study, identifying general epistemological factors affecting the application of scientific methodologies in archaeology

Critical indirectness as a design approach in participatory practice: Spatialities of multivocal estrangement in three engagements with public cultural institutions around participatory projects in Gothenburg

Contributing across the domains of open transdisciplinary inquiry and transdisciplinary- and practice-oriented architectural and urbanism research engaging critically with participation in urban contexts, this research proposes critical indirectness as a multivocal design approach in participatory practice, developed through conceptual-analytical inquiry into three cases involving engagements between external art and design practitioners and public cultural institutions around participatory projects in Gothenburg. It joins with calls for art and design practitioners\u27 greater engagement with public sector institutions as way of working towards a more durable and wider impact, with calls to model a more de-centered \u27urban-combinatory\u27 practice on the plurality, hybridity, discontinuities, and contingencies of the contemporary city, and with calls for more multiple, contradictory approaches. Its methodological approach, open transdisciplinary turn-taking, likewise pursued these aims via alternating engagements between institutional and external actors, my own and others\u27 practices, and theory from multiple fields. The primary aim is to explore how art and design practitioners (including researchers and institutional actors) can develop greater capacity to critically wayfind within the complexities of engagements with public cultural institutions in and around participatory processes. This is supported by two interrelated inquiries, the first reworks monovocal understandings of participation, critique, institutions, and actors as multivocal—simultaneously collective, complex, and involving actors\u27 critical and creative trajectories of agency. The second conceptualizes multivocal relations as having their own critical efficacy through potentially estranging effects, which can be both reflexively perceived by practitioners and furthered by design. These two inquiries combine in the use, in case analyses, of alternating voices, transversing voices, and wavering voices—conceptual-analytical lenses enabling focus on the critical and creative potentials of spatialities of multivocal estrangement generated by differential interrelations between \u27voices\u27

The Changing Understanding of North American Archaeology and Native American Heritage

This article explores the evolving ways in which anthropologists, archaeologists, and the United States government have viewed Native American cultural heritage, especially in terms of burials and grave goods. I begin with a historical view of the looting and racism that plagued the disciplines since their inception, and move into the present, while examining how NAGPRA has enabled indigenous communities to have a voice concerning what happens to their heritage, thus transforming archaeology in beneficial and productive ways that were previously not thought possible

An autoethnographic exploration of creative design practice: towards pedagogic implications.

Doctoral degree, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban.I have lectured Jewellery Design at a University of Technology in South Africa for nearly 30 years now. My teaching practice has gradually adjusted over the years to suit the changing needs of the industry, the university and the students. I have become aware of the need to make deliberate adjustments, because the changes happening around me are more complex than I realized, and I feel out of touch with my students. To gain a better understanding of my own creative practice and the intersection with my pedagogic practice, I have undertaken an autoethnographic exploration of my identity as creative artist and designer, and as university educator. I produce numerous objects during the creative design process and my office/studio is filled with these artefacts. It occurred to me that there might be meanings contained within these objects that could influence my creative and pedagogic practice. So I set out to analyse the things that line my office walls. The research questions that guided my research were: a) Which are my significant creative outputs/artefacts, and why do I consider them to be important? b) How does my self manifest in these significant creative outputs/artefacts? and c) What are the pedagogic implications of an enhanced awareness of self in creative practice? As an artist and creative designer, I often stage and participate in exhibitions. So I decided to analyse the objects that I produced for these exhibitions to see what I could find. I developed an autoethnographic self-interview method using denotative prompts and connotative responses, which enabled me to reveal an underlying network of connections that culminated and intersected within the objects. On analysing the significances, I was able to recognise aspects of my creative process and arrive at an understanding of creativity that allowed me to engage fruitfully with factors that could influence the development of creative ability. The elements I identified within my own creative practice, using the self-interview, related to the meandering nature of creativity, the role serendipity plays, and the extent to which I draw on personal experience as a source of inspiration. The primary original contribution of this thesis lies in the development, refinement and use of the autoethnographic self-interview. When I considered these insights in terms of my pedagogic practice I realised that I could pay more attention to the diversity of my students, to the heterogeneity that manifested in the classroom . I recognised that this approach could help me acknowledge the emergent nature of v creativity, particularly if I wanted to encourage my students to use their own personal experiences as a foundation for creative design. By inviting this personalised approach I would, of necessity, have to make them aware of the nature of serendipity, of the ‘happy accidents’ in daily life (and creative design), and the usefulness of this phenomenon when aiming for innovation, or in a better word, creativity.Only available in English

Can oil speak? On the production of ontological difference and ambivalence in extractive encounters

Two disparate views emerge as rural people living along Timor-Leste’s south coast are confronted by extractive industries charged with implementing a large oil infrastructure project: emphasis is put either on the productive potential of the non-human environment or on the spiritual connections with particular sites. Whilst political ontology approaches posit that resource conflicts reveal underlying ontological differences between animism and naturalism, this article shows how differences are in fact produced by extractive encounters. Resource extraction promotes the articulation of clear-cut positions, thereby displacing more ambivalent relations with the inhabited environment. The ontological multiplicity of East Timorese origin accounts challenges the analytical prioritization of difference in political ontology and provides a model for attending to multivocality, ambiguity and political context

Dialogue as Data in Learning Analytics for Productive Educational Dialogue

This paper provides a novel, conceptually driven stance on the state of the contemporary analytic challenges faced in the treatment of dialogue as a form of data across on- and offline sites of learning. In prior research, preliminary steps have been taken to detect occurrences of such dialogue using automated analysis techniques. Such advances have the potential to foster effective dialogue using learning analytic techniques that scaffold, give feedback on, and provide pedagogic contexts promoting such dialogue. However, the translation of much prior learning science research to online contexts is complex, requiring the operationalization of constructs theorized in different contexts (often face-to-face), and based on different datasets and structures (often spoken dialogue). In this paper, we explore what could constitute the effective analysis of productive online dialogues, arguing that it requires consideration of three key facets of the dialogue: features indicative of productive dialogue; the unit of segmentation; and the interplay of features and segmentation with the temporal underpinning of learning contexts. The paper thus foregrounds key considerations regarding the analysis of dialogue data in emerging learning analytics environments, both for learning-science and for computationally oriented researchers