Two weeks ago I attended the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) meeting in Austin, Texas. EDUCAUSE is focused on furthering higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. ELI is an EDUCAUSE community dedicated to the development of learning through technology innovation. This was my first EDUCAUSE conference and it was exciting to attend a meeting dedicated to learning, technology, and higher education.
Learning analytics was a big trend at the meeting. In fact, there were several sessions dedicated to projects involving learning analytics and a panel debate on its efficacy and future. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept , learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about student learning. At least from what I’ve seen so far, learning analytics programs are typically incorporated within a course management system as a tool to improve student success by making it easy to tell when students appear to be struggling. Those opposed to learning analytics are afraid that it is too superficial—how do you define student success based on a number of logins, clicks, and quiz grades? I think that learning analytics has a lot of potential—especially in the realm of online learning, but I doubt it will ever be able to replace the connection between a teacher and a student.
One of my favorite presentations at the conference was given by Janet Zadina, an educational neuroscientist. She presented on her research on brain processes during learning. One of her main recommendations is that teachers need to provide as many pathways or opportunities as possible to allow the brain to make connections. My main takeaway from her presentation is that the ubiquitous “one-shots” library workshops are not allowing for long-term potentiation, or long-lasting signals between neurons. Academic librarians have known all along that our one-shots aren’t enough, but now we have scientific evidence to back up our gut feelings!
The NMC Horizon Report, a product of the New Media Consortium and ELI, monitors emerging technology trends in education around the world. The 2012 edition was released about a month ago. There was a session at the meeting devoted to the report in which we heard the highlights of the key findings. There weren’t too many surprises. Mobile apps and tablet computing are expected to become pervasive within higher education in the next twelve months. In two to three years, game-based learning and learning analytics are expected to receive widespread adoption. Lastly, the authors see gesture-based computing and the Internet of Things as emerging in about four to five years. You can download a PDF copy of the report here.
The only disappointing part of ELI was hearing presentations on research projects that seemed to neglect the role of libraries. For example, I saw a presentation on a pilot project that examined student use of digital learning resources. It sounded like the researchers did not consult their librarians nor did they include any questions on library usage in their survey. This just goes to show that librarians need to become more involved in organizations such as EDUCAUSE so that we can ensure that our voices are heard.