Examine the Role of Data in Predictive Analytics

Technology plays a large role in predictive analytics. You have been provided several resources to review this week, which introduce you to the use of technology in learning analytic projects.

For the first part of this assignment, choose one of the five projects you were introduced to and discuss the role of predictive analytics.

You are to describe the purpose of the project you chose (what were they trying to predict) and then identify the key stakeholders, technology, and data that come from each of these pieces of technology.

When describing the data describe:

(a) its role in the learning analytics predictive process/model,

(b) the origin of the data, and

(c) your concerns over any of the use of data.

Next, create a flow chart (use figure 2, page 14, of the Picciano article to guide you) identifying the various data sources (e.g., mainframe student information systems; outside data bases such as ETS or ACT; content/course management systems or learning management systems; proprietary analytics programs such as IBM analytics, Blackboard analytics, Knewton, Desire2learn, etc.) that were used.

You may have to do a little extra research to find this out. If the exact product name isn’t given, you can safely identify it as a proprietary or custom analytics system/tool. These are tools that sit on existing learning platforms and extract and use algorithms.

Finally, you will carefully review and consider the role of rational thinking (Piccaino article, pages 11 and 19) also characterized as “experience, expertise, intuition, judgement, and acumen of competent educators” and the role of rational thinking in the project you chose to report on.

Is there any element of rational thinking in this project, or is it all data-driven decision making? Given the project’s design and implementation, what would you have done differentlchoy? Why or why not?

Review:

THE EVOLUTION OF BIG DATA AND LEARNING ANALYTICS IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION BY Anthony G. Picciano