Learning Analytics: An opportunity for education

摘要

How analytics is transforming the future for millions of learners. Analytics, data mining, machine learning, and, increasingly, broadly applicable artificial intelligence are revolutionizing various fields. Education is no exception. Though rhetoric around education often emphasizes how much classrooms look like the classrooms of a century ago, what children are doing to learn is changing rapidly. Increasingly, education is shaped by artificial intelligence and data. Today, growing amounts of K-12 and undergraduate learning involve adaptive learning platforms that let students work at their own pace, provide detailed feedback on student errors, and inform teachers what students are struggling with. More and more schools and universities are using predictive analytics to determine which students are at risk of dropping out (or other negative outcomes) and why. These advances-where they are used-are producing better learning outcomes and putting students on the path to more promising futures. These advances build upon a growing body of research, involving analytics to better understand and model learning (aka learning analytics or educational data mining) and using the findings to redesign and improve learning systems(aka learning engineering).