Higher education and the promises and perils of social network

The last decade has produced tremendous innovation in how people connect with one another online. Social networks have experienced a rapid increase in popularity, producing both concerns (privacy, content ownership) and opportunities. The articles in this journal can be viewed as attempts to answer the question: What should educators do about social networks

Where is research on massive open online courses headed? A data analysis of the MOOC research initiative

This paper reports on the results of an analysis of the research proposals submitted to the MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) funded by the Gates Foundation and administered by Athabasca University. The goal of MRI was to mobilize researchers to engage into critical interrogation of MOOCs. The submissions – 266 in Phase 1, out of which 78 was recommended for resubmission in the extended form in Phase 2, and finally, 28 funded – were analyzed by applying conventional and automated content analysis methods as well as citation network analysis methods. The results revealed the main research themes that could form a framework of the future MOOC research: i) student engagement and learning success, ii) MOOC design and curriculum, iii) self-regulated learning and social learning, iv) social network analysis and networked learning, and v) motivation, attitude and success criteria. The theme of social learning received the greatest interest and had the highest success in attracting funding. The submissions that planned on using learning analytics methods were more successful. The use of mixed methods was by far the most popular. Design-based research methods were also suggested commonly, but the questions about their applicability arose regarding the feasibility to perform multiple iterations in the MOOC context and rather a limited focus on technological support for interventions. The submissions were dominated by the researchers from the field of education (75% of the accepted proposals). Not only was this a possible cause of a complete lack of success of the educational technology innovation theme, but it could be a worrying sign of the fragmentation in the research community and the need to increased efforts towards enhancing interdisciplinarity

Taking Action: A Proposal for an Analytic Solution to Increase Gateway Course Success

As part of the 2012 SoLAR Flare gathering at Purdue University (October 1-3, 2012), colleagues from higher education institutions and technology service organizations participated in an exercise to develop a learning analytics application to improve college student performance college gateway courses. Defined as high enrollment, high failure rate courses taken by primarily first- and second-year college students, these gateway courses are critical to overall student success in college. This paper summarizes the activities of the group, including the conceptual frameworks that guided discussions and the proposed features of the analytics solution. The exercise was guided by Andrew K. Koch, Executive Vice President of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education

Extracting particle freeze-out phase-space densities and entropies from sources imaged in heavy-ion reactions

The space-averaged phase-space density and entropy per particle are both fundamental observables which can be extracted from the two-particle correlation functions measured in heavy-ion collisions. Two techniques have been proposed to extract the densities from correlation data: either by using the radius parameters from Gaussian fits to meson correlations or by using source imaging, which may be applied to any like pair correlation. We show that the imaging and Gaussian fits give the same result in the case of meson interferometry. We discuss the concept of an equivalent instantaneous source on which both techniques rely. We also discuss the phase-space occupancy and entropy per particle. Finally, we propose an improved formula for the phase-space occupancy that has a more controlled dependence on the uncertainty of the experimentally measured source functions.Comment: 14 pages, final version, to appear PRC. Fixed typos, added refs. for last section, added discussions of imaging and d/p ratio