Evidence Based Decision Making in the Classroom

Background

While many stakeholders who generate data are enthusiastic about its potential value to improve the student experience, where to start on deriving actionable intelligence from that data is still perceived as a challenge.

This workshop aims to explore initiatives and ideas that empower stakeholders in higher education to make better use of their data, to promote evidence–based practice and ultimately improve the student experience. Building on current research, the workshop aims to foster fresh thinking about LA that focuses on empowerment rather than surveillance, and ultimately promotes both self-efficacy and confidence among students and staff in their knowledge and use of learning data.

Run as a half-day interactive workshop, it will include short presentations on current work in this area intermixed with group-based activities to promote discussion, debate, and sharing of ideas.  The session is the first part of an exciting 1-day mini-track on teacher decision making;  it is followed in the afternoon by the 3rd Personalizing Feedback at Scale Workshop: Teacher-Driven Action and Dialogue.

Target Audience

Have you struggled to engage stakeholders in learning analytics?

Are you a stakeholder struggling to understand the potential of learning analytics?

This workshop is for anyone passionate about enabling in-context, evidenced-based decision making in education, and empowering both students and staff to cultivate the power behind their data.

Objectives

1. Sharing of ideas and experiences: Evidenced-based learning analytics requires those in the cold face of teaching, learning and student support to harvest the information generated in their respective contexts, to inform best practice and optimise student success. Widespread acceptance and adoption of learning analytics to answer questions that have meaning for stakeholders is a key challenge over the coming decade. This workshop is a step towards exploring how that may be achieved.
2. Community Building: An objective of the workshop is to provide a meeting place for researchers who take a special interest in operationalizing learning analytics to support evidence-based teaching and learning practices. We anticipate that a concentrated meeting will promote continuing collaboration on this important topic.
3. Initiating a resource repository: Through community building and sharing ideas, a longer-term goal of this initiative is to establish a repository of resources aimed at improving data literacy in educational contexts.

Tell us about your interest in this areas:

In preparation for the workshop, please tell us something about yourself and what your interests are this area:

Workshop organisers:

Geraldine Gray, Pauline Rooney, Kevin O’Rourke & James Doody, Technological University Dublin

Phelim Murnion, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology

Lee O’Farrell, National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

Charles Lang, Columbia University