Dragan Gašević is a Professor and Chair in Learning Analytics and Informatics in the Moray House School of Education and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He is the current President and a co-founder of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). A computer scientist by training, Dragan considers himself a learning scientist developing computational methods that can shape next-generation learning technologies and advance our understanding of self-regulated and social learning. Funded by granting agencies and industry in Canada, Australia, Europe, and USA, Dragan is a recipient of several best paper awards at the major international conferences in learning and software technology. Committed to the development of international research community, Dragan had a pleasure to serve as a founding program co-chair of the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge in 2011 and 2012 and the Learning Analytics Summer Institute in 2014 and 2014. Currently serving as a founding editor of the Journal of Learning Analytics and the general chair of International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK2016), Dragan is a (co-)author of numerous research papers and books and a frequent keynote speaker.

Plenary lecture: What’s up with learning analytics?
Friday, November 20, 2015., 14:00 hours, Elafiti

Reflecting on key aspects of the new field of research and practice

The analysis of data collected from user interactions with educational and information technology has attracted much attention as a promising approach for advancing our understanding of the learning process.  This promise motivated the emergence of the new field learning analytics and mobilized the education sector to embrace the use of data for decision-making. This talk will first introduce the field of learning analytics and touch on lessons learned from some well-known case studies. The talk will then identify critical challenges that require immediate attention in order for learning analytics to make a sustainable impact on research and practice of learning and teaching. The talk will conclude in discussing a set of milestones selected as critical for the maturation and wide spread adoption of learning analytics. The most important take away from the talk will be that i) learning analytics are about learning, ii) computational aspects of learning analytics need to be integrated deeply with educational research and practice, and iii) systemic approaches to learning analytics implementation are necessary if system-wide transformation is aimed.