Learning analytics to identify exploratory dialogue within synchronous text chat

While generic web analytics tend to focus on easily harvested quantitative data, Learning Analytics will often seek qualitative understanding of the context and meaning of this information. This is critical in the case of dialogue, which may be employed to share knowledge and jointly construct understandings, but which also involves many superficial exchanges. Previous studies have validated a particular pattern of “exploratory dialogue” in learning environments to signify sharing, challenge, evaluation and careful consideration by participants. This study investigates the use of sociocultural discourse analysis to analyse synchronous text chat during an online conference. Key words and phrases indicative of exploratory dialogue were identified in these exchanges, and peaks of exploratory dialogue were associated with periods set aside for discussion and keynote speakers. Fewer individuals posted at these times, but meaningful discussion outweighed trivial exchanges. If further analysis confirms the validity of these markers as learning analytics, they could be used by recommendation engines to support learners and teachers in locating dialogue exchanges where deeper learning appears to be taking place

Towards a social learning space for open educational resources

We identify a number of meanings of “Open”, as part of the motivating rationale for a social media space tuned for learning, called SocialLearn. We discuss why online social learning seems to be emerging so strongly at this point, explore features of social learning, and identify some of the dimensions that we believe characterize the social learning design space, before describing the emerging design concept and implementation

Evaluating the provision of school performance information for school choice

One of the key components of any school choice system is the information given to parents as the basis for choice. We develop and implement a framework for determining the optimal performance metrics to help parents choose a school. This approach combines the three major critiques of the usefulness of performance tables into a natural, implementable metric. The best content for school performance tables is the statistic that best answers the question: “In which feasible choice school will a particular child achieve the highest exam score?” We implement this approach for 500,000 students in England for a range of performance measures. Using performance tables is strongly better than choosing at random: a child who attends the highest ex ante performing school within their choice set will ex post do better than the average outcome in their choice set twice as often as they will do worse.school choice, performance tables

The use, role and reception of open badges as a method for formative and summative reward in two Massive Open Online Courses

Open online learning courses such as cMOOCs and xMOOCs differ from conventional courses yet it remains uncertain how, and if, existing common yet costly practices associated with teacher-driven formative and summative assessment strategies can be made to work in this new context. For courses that carry no charge for registration or participation, authors of open online courses have to consider alternative approaches to engaging, motivating and sustaining study and for helping participants manage, plan and demonstrate their own learning. One such approach is that of open badges or similar such visual public symbols that communicate to others a particular quality, achievement or affiliation possessed by the owner. This paper reports the role, reception and use of open badges in two ‘massive’ open online courses delivered in 2013 with attention to varied functions of badges and the a distinction between formative and summative applications. The paper will then draw upon data from end of course surveys, which specifically asked about badges, pre-course surveys, and user comments made during the course on platforms such as Twitter to examine what value participants ascribed to the open badges. Although there was found to be a broadly positive response to badges in both MOOCs, the reasons for this were often very different, and approximately a quarter of respondents remained sceptical or concerned about their role. The paper concludes by reflecting on the open badge as a formative instrument for providing the learner with an indication of progress and achievement

Sustainability in the theology curriculum

This is the author's PDF version of a book chapter available in Sustainability education: Perspectives and practice across higher education. Edited by Paula Jones, David Selby, and Stephen Sterling. London: Earthscan, 2010. This book chapter was reproduced with the kind permission of EasthScan.This book chapter discusses how theology has the potential to contribute to education for sustainable development

The early impact of Brighton and Hove's school admission reforms

We analyse the initial impact of a major school admission reform in Brighton and Hove. The new system incorporated a lottery for oversubscribed places and new catchment areas. We examine the post-reform changes in school composition. We locate the major winners and losers in terms of the quality of school attended. We match similar cities and conduct a difference-in-difference analysis of the policy change. We see no significant change in student sorting: if anything, the point estimates suggest a rise in socio-economic segregation. We do see a significant weakening of the dependence of school attended on student’s prior attainment.school lottery, segregation, school admissions reforms

More Reliable Inference for Segregation Indices

The most widely used measure of segregation is the dissimilarity index, D. It is now well understood that this measure also reflects randomness in the allocation of individuals to units; that is, it measures deviations from evenness not deviations from randomness. This leads to potentially large values of the segregation index when unit sizes and/or minority proportions are small, even if there is no underlying systematic segregation. Our response to this is to produce an adjustment to the index, based on an underlying statistical model. We specify the assignment problem in a very general way, with differences in conditional assignment probabilities underlying the resulting segregation. From this we derive a likelihood ratio test for the presence of any systematic segregation and a bootstrap bias adjustment to the dissimilarity index. We further develop the asymptotic distribution theory for testing hypotheses concerning the magnitude of the segregation index and show that use of bootstrap methods can improve the size and power properties of test procedures considerably. We illustrate these methods by comparing dissimilarity indices across school districts in England to measure social segregation.segregation, dissimilarity index, bootstrap methods, hypothesis testing

Fertility building strategies during the conversion period – assessment of performance in a stockless field vegetable rotation

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference of the Colloquium of Organic Researchers (COR). Nutrient off-takes, residue returns and nutrient inputs were measured during and after conversion from a conventional arable system to organic vegetables with cereals. This data was used to construct nutrient budgets to assess the effectiveness of contrasting fertility building strategies and various cropping regimes. The effect of placing the cereal crops in different places in the crop sequence was also considered