Seminario dal titolo: Opening up the opportunity spaces for learning analytics design
Sala riunioni Dpss 1 - Padova, Via venezia 8 ore 14.30
08.10.2018
Su interessamento della dott.ssa Ambra Fastelli e della Prof.ssa Barbara Arfé, si invitano gli interessati a partecipare al seminario tenuto dalla Dott.ssa Yvonne Vezzoli, che collabora con il Knowledge Lab della UCL <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-centres/centres/ucl-knowledge-lab> (Londra) dove si sviluppano nuove tecnologie a supporto dell'educazione.
Gli interessati possono esprimere la loro intenzione a partecipare scrivendo una mail all'indirizzo ambra.fastelli@phd.unipd.it
Title: Opening up the opportunity spaces for learning analytics design
Speaker: Dr. Yvonne Vezzoli (UCL)
Abstract: Learning Analytics (LA) tools have been defined as the “measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (LAK 2011, call for papers). The development of such tools has followed from the growing recognition that learning with technology is most likely to occur with appropriate teaching and scaffolding. Accordingly, it has been argued that the data provided through LA tools can raise teachers’ awareness and reflection, informing their decision-making and consequent behaviors in classroom contexts.
LAdigital tools typically allow the tracking of students’ progress, the class’ workflow and support class management. Research on LA has chiefly focused on enhancing the effectiveness of teachers’ orchestration of the classroom and its
inevitable variability and complexity. Despite the pedagogical aspirations of such tools, however, the central role of data science in the context of LA has meant that researchers have often focused on the necessary algorithms involved in operationalizing LA as opposed to understanding the pedagogical needs that these algorithms should serve. When the teacher perspective has been recognized, this has tended to come at the end of the design process, for instance involving teachers to understand how existing LA tools can be effectively used, rather than defining the initial design agenda with them.
Participatory Design (PD) methods traditionally involve end users in the design process form the early stages. PD sessions involve a dialogic and collaborative process whereby end users play an important role in sharing expertise and local knowledge, and designers mediate and scaffold the process of crafting new possibilities for alternative futures that oscillate between “tradition” on the one end (i.e., design supporting current practices and needs) and “transcendence” on the other (i.e., design generating new critical possibilities that challenge the status quo). Using a learning game for early literacy called Navigo as a case study, we applied a participatory approach to the design of the LA tools that will support teachers’ future use of the games. Our work aimed to explore how teachers interpreted the opportunities offered by LA for their teaching activities, and what forms of "transcendence" teachers envisioned in the LA possibilities.
After a brief presentation of the EU H2020-funded project iRead (https://iread-project.eu), the talk will discuss LA and their methods from a design point of view. Then, it will present the results of the empirical study, with particular attention to the pedagogical and methodological implications.
Bio: Yvonne Vezzoli holds a M.Sc. in Cognitive Sciences from the University of Milan and she will soon complete her European Ph.D. in Educational Sciences, carried out between Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the UCL Knowledge Lab in London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-centres/centres/ucl-knowledge-lab). She has recently been selected as postdoctoral research associate on the iRead project at the UCL Department of Psychology and Human Development, part of the UCL Institute of Education.
