“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” – Niels Bohr, Mark Twain, Yogi Berra, or perhaps someone else.
I think the nascent field of learning analytics is facing its first serious, defining issue.
It seems the claims for the effectiveness of Course Signals, Purdue University’s trailblazing learning analytics program, are not quite as robust as it seemed. You can get a quick journalistic overview from Inside Higher Education’s story (which has good links to the sources) or the Times Higher Education’s version (which appears identical, except the useful links have been stripped).
This post is a bit long. As Voltaire, Proust, Pliny or (again) Mark Twain may have said, my apologies, but I didn’t have time to write a short one. It’s important, though.
Doug Clow's Imaginatively-Titled Blog 