A review of ten years of implementation and research in aligning learning design with learning analytics at the Open University UK

There is an increased recognition that learning design drives both student learning experience and quality enhancements of teaching and learning. The Open University UK (OU) has been one of few institutions that have explicitly and systematically captured the designs for learning at a large scale. By applying advanced analytical techniques on large and fine-grained datasets, the OU has been unpacking the complexity of instructional practices, as well as providing conceptual and empirical evidence of how learning design influences student behaviour, satisfaction, and performance. This study discusses the implementation of learning design at the OU in the last ten years, and critically reviews empirical evidence from eight recent large-scale studies that have linked learning design with learning analytics. Four future research themes are identified to support future adoptions of learning design approaches

Collective Intelligence Analytics Dashboard Usability Evaluation

Online deliberations can reach a size where it is not possible anymore to quickly infer what is going on in a debate. This report presents results from the usefulness and usability evaluation of visualisations that aid the sense-making of large debates. Based on the results of the evaluations we prepared a set of recommendations to inform CI tool providers about the usefulness and usability of each visualisation

Global Innovations in Measurement and Evaluation

We researched the latest developments in theory and practice in measurement and evaluation. And we found that new thinking, techniques, and technology are influencing and improving practice. This report highlights 8 developments that we think have the greatest potential to improve evaluation and programme design, and the careful collection and use of data. In it, we seek to inform and inspire—to celebrate what is possible, and encourage wider application of these ideas

Investigating content representations (CoRes) as pedagogical tools for science teacher education

In this article Anne Hume discusses how use of scholarship and action research led me to introduce an intervention into my science education programmes called Content Representations (CoRes). My initial findings strongly indicate CoRes could be very useful tools for helping student teachers develop the professional knowledge base they need for teaching

Engage - Using Data About Research Clusters to Enhance Collaboration

This project explored different classifications of research and ideas for implementing these in University systems to facilitate publicity of research

Animating the evolution of software

The use and development of open source software has increased significantly in the last decade. The high frequency of changes and releases across a distributed environment requires good project management tools in order to control the process adequately. However, even with these tools in place, the nature of the development and the fact that developers will often work on many other projects simultaneously, means that the developers are unlikely to have a clear picture of the current state of the project at any time. Furthermore, the poor documentation associated with many projects has a detrimental effect when encouraging new developers to contribute to the software. A typical version control repository contains a mine of information that is not always obvious and not easy to comprehend in its raw form. However, presenting this historical data in a suitable format by using software visualisation techniques allows the evolution of the software over a number of releases to be shown. This allows the changes that have been made to the software to be identified clearly, thus ensuring that the effect of those changes will also be emphasised. This then enables both managers and developers to gain a more detailed view of the current state of the project. The visualisation of evolving software introduces a number of new issues. This thesis investigates some of these issues in detail, and recommends a number of solutions in order to alleviate the problems that may otherwise arise. The solutions are then demonstrated in the definition of two new visualisations. These use historical data contained within version control repositories to show the evolution of the software at a number of levels of granularity. Additionally, animation is used as an integral part of both visualisations - not only to show the evolution by representing the progression of time, but also to highlight the changes that have occurred. Previously, the use of animation within software visualisation has been primarily restricted to small-scale, hand generated visualisations. However, this thesis shows the viability of using animation within software visualisation with automated visualisations on a large scale. In addition, evaluation of the visualisations has shown that they are suitable for showing the changes that have occurred in the software over a period of time, and subsequently how the software has evolved. These visualisations are therefore suitable for use by developers and managers involved with open source software. In addition, they also provide a basis for future research in evolutionary visualisations, software evolution and open source development

Governance in the age of social machines: the web observatory

The World Wide Web has provided unprecedented access to information; as humans and machines increasingly interact with it they provide more and more data. The challenge is how to analyse and interpret this data within the context that it was created, and to present it in a way that both researchers and practitioners can more easily make sense of. The first step is to have access to open and interoperable data sets, which Governments around the world are increasingly subscribing to. But having ‘open’ data is just the beginning and does not necessarily lead to better decision making or policy development. This is because data do not provide the answers – they need to be analysed, interpreted and understood within the context of their creation, and the business imperative of the organisation using them. The major corporate entities, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, have the capabilities to do this, but are driven by their own commercial imperatives, and their data are largely siloed and held within ‘walled gardens’ of information. All too often governments and non-profit groups lack these capabilities, and are driven by very different mandates. In addition they have far more complex community relationships, and must abide by regulatory constraints which dictate how they can use the data they hold. As such they struggle to maximise the value of this emerging ‘digital currency’ and are therefore largely beholden to commercial vendors. What has emerged is a public-private data ecosystem that has huge policy implications (including the twin challenges of privacy and security). Many within the public sector lack the skills to address these challenges because they lack the literacy required within the digital context. This project seeks to address some of these problems by bringing together a safe and secure Australian-based data platform (facilitating the sharing of data, analytics and visualisation) with policy analysis and governance expertise in order to create a collaborative working model of a ‘Government Web Observatory’. This neutral space, hosted by an Australian university, can serve as a powerful complement to existing Open Data initiatives in Australia, and enable research and education to combine to support the development of a more digitally literate public service. The project aims to explore where, and in which contexts, people, things, data and the Internet meet and result in evolving observable phenomena which can inform better government policy development and service delivery.&nbsp

Development of a music organizer for children

Software development for children is challenging; children have their own needs, which often are not met by ‘grown up’ software. We focus on software for playing songs and managing a music collection—tasks that children take great interest in, but for which they have few or inappropriate tools. We address this situation with the design of a new music management system, created with children as design partners: the Kids Music Box