Demystifying xAPI and Learning Analytics
(Room S320D)
27 Nov 17
2:30 PM
-
4:00 PM
Learning happens everywhere: in classrooms and training ranges, web-browsers and videos, on smartphones and their many apps, in VR and AR, and a dozen new technologies released each year. Ideally, learning assessment also occurs across these numerous platforms—but what happens to those data? Too often little-to-no learning assessment occurs; instead, learners may get a “check box” for completion. Even when meaningful evaluation takes place, those data are often locked into silos—trapped in a thousand different spreadsheets, simulators, learning management systems, and databases. If we could enable better learning assessment, and integrate people’s assessment data from across their formal, informal, and on-the-job learning experiences, we could gain powerful insights for training, education, and human capital management.
This tutorial discusses capabilities related to these goals. Specifically, the tutorial will introduce (non-technical) participants to learning analytics and the associated Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) technical data specification. xAPI lets applications capture and share (big) data on human performance, along with associated instructional content and performance context information. Combined with learning analytics, these tools promise to revolutionize the way training and education is conducted, managed, and measured.
More precisely the tutorial will include an introduction to xAPI, a comparison between xAPI and SCORM, an introduction to learning analytics, and a preview about the future Total Learning Architecture.