Back to behaviorism? #LAK12

“… The students’ feelings and attitudes, which are hugely important to the educational process, cannot be measured by clicks at all.”

http://libraryanalytics.blogspot.com/2012/02/behaviorism.html

My reply:

Clicks, ok, but fortunately ‘social learners’ do more than clicking: they write, comment, repost, blog, etc. There are many different methods and approaches that can interpret data in a more meaningful way (still in dev), and they could in principle detect emotions. Taking into account future developments in sensor networks and smart computing, I think these possibilities will only increase in the future.

An example of some good research into semantic analysis of the social web on my university: http://wis.ewi.tudelft.nl/imreal/u-sem/

Innovation and analytics in farming

Very interesting recording from yesterday’s session on data and analytics in agriculture is now available. Chris Perry - a potato farmer - detailed how they use analytics to transform their farming operation, moving to “biomimicry” (following the natural biological process) and reducing the impact of chemicals on farming.

From the Learning Analytics Course 2012 - http://lak12.wikispaces.com/