Living the interface between learning analytics and actual change in a HE setting
The 2021/22 academic year was a bit of a surprise for the sector. Students were effectively released from the pressures of lockdown and social distancing and ended up more anxious, more confused and certainly less engaged than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It may be that students were just catching up on two …
Continue reading Student attendance/ engagement policies – why do we bother?
<blogging as a filing cabinet> A bit like the hippy search for nirvana (you'll know it when you see it), the term 'student engagement' can be a little vague. I think this is because at times it becomes synonymous with 'student learning' or 'student experience'. I've described a broad definition of student engagement in the …
Continue reading Student Engagement Literature Review (2010)
Students drop out from their courses for a variety of reasons. Early withdrawal is shaped by Socio-economic forces, students' personal goals/ mission for being at university, the lived experience of studying and sometimes just bad luck. We may not be able to precisely weight these factors, but they appear pretty consistently in studies. The sector …
A few years ago I was asked the question by the colleague "Is blockchain the future of higher education?" After quite a lot of reading and head scratching I reckoned the answer was "no". However, the question keeps coming back. I still think the answer's "no", only these days it's "***k no". The more I …
Continue reading Millennials in the virtual church aisles – a thought for universities
The book I’ve found most challenging and rewarding recently is ‘Irrationality’. First written in 1992, the book both identifies significant flaws in the human thinking process and advocates for a more standardised scientific approach. It’s a good case. However, nearly 30 years later, we are living through the lived realities of that way of thinking: …
Continue reading Who traces the tracers? Algorithm Watch Report 2021
Largely through the hard work and enthusiasm of Harald Åge Sæthre I know that colleagues in Norwegian universities have invested considerable time thinking about the issues of helping students cope with the transition into the first year. One outcome of this work is the Kompetansenettverk for Studenters Suksess I Høyere Utdanning (competence network for students' …
Picking up on the theme of the last post, I want to come back to the question of what changes peoples' minds? In 12th November 2021 edition of the "Oh God What Now?" podcast, there was a particularly interesting interview with the Climate Scientist, Peter Stott. Stott was asked by one of the panellists, how …
I think if there's a central thesis to any of my writing it's something like: data insufficient for changing individuals or organisations. Just as gravity is apparently to be the weakest of the fundamental sources, I think presenting data may the weakest way to change anyone's view of anything. I'll keep returning to this theme, …
Continue reading Human beings: how we’re pre-wired to ignore the evidence
In the last piece I explained how in our most recent Student Transition Survey (Feb-Mar 2021), we asked students how they would like to be contacted if our learning analytics platform had raised an alert. When presented with a single choice, 32% wanted to be contacted initially by text. We will build this in to …
I recently re-read a copy of White Dwarf games magazine from my youth (mid-1980s). For me, one of the most interesting pages was the personal ads. Amongst requests to swap rulesets, or sell fanzines, there were lots of personals ads. The ads were nearly all from young men and were about meeting other gamers to …
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