learning analytics, soft and hard

Analytics: soft and hard

Jon Dron, TEKRI, Athabasca UniversityLAK11

We shape our dwellings and afterwards our dwellings shape our lives

or, as McLuhan put it, we shape our tools and they shape us.If digital literacies are a phantom, fuzzy, moving target, then how about looking at how technologies themselves are constructed so that we can master them, rather than being mastered by them?

Crowd teaching

1990s - collaborative filtering, tag clouds, social adaptation, recommender systems for learning (e.g. CoFIND)

2000s - social navigation, collective intelligence, crowd wisdom, controllable environments (e.g. Dwellings)

2010s - nature of social learning technologies (e.g. The Landing)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/3326203787/sizes/o/

Ive been trying to discover ways that individual actions in a crowd can be used to help individuals in the crowd to learn better since late 1990s. CoFIND captured implicit and explicit traces of activities - clicks, frequencies, tags, pedagogical metadata known as qualities, bookmarks, to reveal exposed and transient user model. Explicitly self-organising through evolutionary and stigmergic mechanisms. Dwellings used dynamics of cities to self-organise - a cross between a MUD and a wiki, inhabitants moved avatars on sidewalks and built dwellings (content) - left footprints, many social navigation signs, evolutionary struggle between streets and dwellings. Moved on to more controllable technologies like Elgg. Now Im exploring the other parts of a social system to discover the processes that are not programmed - pedagogies, processes, methods, intellectual tools, etc...

group

set

net

learner

teacher

designer

activity

analytics

collect

compute

convey

groups - traditional fare of teaching like classes etcnets - connected people, looser, cannot see whole, only local connectionssets - about counting people and their actions, anonymous, sending messages to anyone/everyone, using aggregates, averages (e.g. classroom show of hands)

Why learning analytics?

to help learning designers make effective changes

to help teachers know how learners are doing

to help learners know how they are doing

to help learners decide what to do next

to tell learners what to do next

What is a technology?

a stick is not a technology - it becomes one when we add processes to utilise its properties for a purpose.Technologies are not just tools and are not necessarily physical. e.g. manufacturing processes, organisational systems, pedagogies, writing, language itself (invented, constantly changing, not just about communication but enabling richer thought in itself)

Technologies are assemblies

all, or almost all, technologies are assemblies ref W Brian ArthurTechnologies are assemblies. As a species we learned to use the things around us to build other things. Language was probably the best invention for that as it let us build ideas upon ideas - conceptual structures that themselves could be used to build bigger, better structures but we see the pattern in all technologies. We use technologies to make technologies and assemble, disassemble and reassemble constantly and continuously. The more we create, the more we are able to create. But sometimes we create technologies that make things easier at the cost of inflexibility. Factories, rigid processes, mass production methods, rules, laws.

What is a learning technology?

Pedagogies

Methods

Processes

Techniques

learning designs

Organizational structures

Software

hardware

management systems

assessment systems

content

always an assembly. all parts can be hard or soft but many are nothing to do with an external object or device.

The dance of technology

ref Terry Anderson. actually a process of coevolution. The soft parts interact with the hard parts, which interact with each other. But it is the soft processes that drive change and evolution

Softness

Increasing the adjacent possible

Kauffman, in Investigations, talks of complex adaptive systems as increasing the adjacent possible - each change opens up opportunities for new change. Franklin (The Real World of Technology) calls such technologies holistic, comparing them with prescriptive technologies, which limit us as humans - mainly automation

Hardness

Makes things easierBy reducing choice

hard technologies, that Franklin calls prescriptive, reduce our ability to be creative. But they increase efficiency, reduce error, make things simpler and can sometimes open up new adjacent possibles themselves - a lunar orbiter, for instance, is a pretty hard technology without which we couldnt go to the moon

Human

Flexible

Machine

Inflexible

Soft

Hard

Two views of soft and hard technology

Soft as in malleable vs soft as in non mechanized - following Don Norman rather than literature on technologies in businessHard as in inflexible vs hard as in solid.

Hard is easy

hard technologies reduce our choices, automate, simplify, speed things up, make things cheaper, reduce opportunity for error. But the cost is creativity and flexibility.

Soft is hard

Softer technologies increase the adjacent possible by enabling and/or making more likely new choices to be made.

More choices come at a price - we have to make them. That is one thing that makes them difficult or hard.

Cognitivist/behaviouristIndividual

controller

Social constructivist

Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set

What the learner needs

Four generations of distance learning

Anderson & Dron, in press

generationfocusteacher roleBy thinking of pedagogies as technologies we can ask questions about compatibility and how they interact with other technologies. May more importantly, we can see them as mechanisms that coevolve with other technologies, what terry calls the dance between technology and pedagogy. It is not a dance but a growing together. Different generations of pedagogy and other teahcing machinery have coevolved. Until machines for communication were cheap and ubiquitous, constricitivist approaches were marginal. Connectivism is all about networked people and stuff they create and consume.Behaviourist


controller


Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set



Postal service and telephone



controller


Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set



Forums and the LMS



controller


Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set



generationfocusteacher roleUser generated, Web 2.0

By thinking of pedagogies as technologies we can ask questions about compatibility and how they interact with other technologies. May more importantly, we can see them as mechanisms that coevolve with other technologies, what terry calls the dance between technology and pedagogy. It is not a dance but a growing together. Different generations of pedagogy and other teahcing machinery have coevolved. Until machines for communication were cheap and ubiquitous, constricitivist approaches were marginal. Connectivism is all about networked people and stuff they create and consume.Behaviourist


controller


Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set



generationfocusteacher roleCrowd intelligence, personalization,analytics

By thinking of pedagogies as technologies we can ask questions about compatibility and how they interact with other technologies. May more importantly, we can see them as mechanisms that coevolve with other technologies, what terry calls the dance between technology and pedagogy. It is not a dance but a growing together. Different generations of pedagogy and other teahcing machinery have coevolved. Until machines for communication were cheap and ubiquitous, constricitivist approaches were marginal. Connectivism is all about networked people and stuff they create and consume.Behaviourist


controller


Group

guide

Connectivist

Network

co-traveller

Wholist

Set



Soft

Hard

generationfocusteacher rolea move from harder to softer technologies, but there is a twist - it all depends up your point of view

Soft for whom?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/SA6HEWNCB5I/AAAAAAAABeA/FTkqbqDd9do/s1600-h/1964-worlds-fair-schoolmarm.jpg

A technology that is soft for one person may be a set of chains for another. Computers are the softest machines ever invented, perhaps (language may be a contender), but only for those who use them to create other machines or who use the machines they embody to gain flexibility. For a clerk in a store operating a cash register, the opposite may be true: 'the computer says no' is the punchline of a great series of sketches on British TV but is a ubiquitous feature of life - most of us are victims most days of a machine limiting what someone can do to help us.

For example...

Developers

Course developers

Policy makers

Tutors

Students

System Administrators

Teachers

Learning Management Systems

Soft

Hard

Plugin developers

Developers

System Administrators

Course developers

Policy makers

Tutors

Students

...and everyone else

Teachers

Administrators

Alumni

Social networking system

Soft

Hard

Plugin developers

social networking tools are cool.
BUT...

Soft is hard

Softer technologies increase the adjacent possible by enabling and/or making more likely new choices to be made.

More choices come at a price - we have to make them. That is one thing that makes them difficult or hard.

Hard is easy

automation makes it quicker, more efficient, simpler to do things. It does so by reducing choices.

to help learning designers make effective changes

to help teachers know how learners are doing

to help learners know how they are doing

to help learners decide what to do next

to tell learners what to do next

Human - adaptable

Machine - adaptive

Soft

Hard

So, back to our model, the human element is strong when we use information from analytics to make changes. The more the system itself contributes, the less control is given to humans.

Some risks of analytics

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mob_Chase.JPEG

http://www.flickr.com/photos/osucommons/3226077133/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cornelluniversitylibrary/3855473015/in/set-72157622140446726/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationaalarchief/2948560477/sizes/o/

Buster Keaton being chased by mob - mob stupidityconcern for the engine, not the peopleheath robinson (like Rube Goldberg) - pointless machinesschoolroom mentality - not for the learnerIf we feed back the wrong thing, our systems will reinforce stupidity. We need to know what we are collecting and how it will affect behaviour. The harder the system, the greater the risks

Softening analytics

scrutable, not opaque

signposts, not fenceposts

adaptable, not adaptive

aggregation, not integration

BUT....

Being in control

Choosing when to choose

Control

Choices

But, sometimes hard is the right thing. We want the best of all worlds.

A target:Making the hard soft,making the soft hard(when we need them to be)

Soft

Hard

Soft

Hard

The landing is a tool to extend the adjacent possible. It moves control to the individual and the group. It has many tools that can be combined and recombined in many ways. It is a virtual velcro to pull people and things together. But it is a very soft technology and so makes some things harder. We are seeking ways to harden the soft by seeking feedback and ideas as well as observation. But the big dream is to put the hardening in the hands of the people. Eg context switcher.

Assemblies

you can modify but it is better to use larger scale object to build assemblies. Assemblies can both soften and harden. If a system doesnt do what you want, add a bit - that increases the adjacent possible. But what you add can also incorporate hardness. So - can use soft analytics to assemble the right things, hard analytics as a component to help guide when needed.

Some take-aways

Learning technologies are blends of soft and hard technologies

Softness increases the adjacent possible. Hardness increases efficiency and reduces error (if we automated the right things)

Soft is hard and hard is easy - we need both

We need control over amount of hardness in all our technologies

Assemblies can give the best of both worlds

thank you

http://[email protected]