Welcome to the eLearn Podcast. My name is Ladek and I’m your Host from Open LMS.
My guest for today is Elizabeth Dalton, Learning & Development Analyst at Intelliboard.
She’s kind of a legend in the eLearning universe around data and analytics, formerly working on predictive analytics with Moodle™. Before that she worked as an Instructional Designer at Granite State College in New Hampshire, Sun Microsystems and, let’s just say, she’s definitely someone you want to be listening to.
In this detailed conversation, Elizabeth and I discuss:
- How data is one of the tools we have to improve the quality of education, and how it helps honor the agreements between teachers & learners and institutional outcomes.
- How her role has changed (or not) when she transitioned from working at Moodle™ to IntelliBoard, and how she’s remained “data first” in what she does.
- What is “analytics” exactly (as opposed to education statistics, for example) and how does it inform the learning experience… before it’s too late for the learner?
- How data can help instructors who only grew up with the in-person experience and are now forced to operate online with things like whether or not learner cameras need to be on all the time.
- What it means to use data to help at-risk students, and what exactly “at-risk” might mean in the various education models we work within different institutions.
- Digital open badges and how these could significantly support many of the things that we all agree on, in general, like common learning goals in a liberal arts education.
- How and why we should never assume that the data systems that we have are smarter than the humans they are involved with, and why this is incredibly important for using predictive analytics.
- We end our conversation with how Elizabeth has some of the most fun looking at the wide variety of experiments happening with data and how we can make solid tools that everyone can use effectively to help learners.
