Opportunity Forecast
"Every student interaction with a mobile device or piece of software is an opportunity to gather real‐ time data that can be used to create personalized learning experiences."
Opportunities in Big Data & Learning Analytics
Big data is valuable because it delivers insight into how humans live and learn. We can use that insight to anticipate problems, make better decisions, and design more useful products and solutions. This is especially relevant in education circles as eLearning is adopted and emphasis shifts to the development of 21st century skills (Care et al., 2018). Tools for data collection are a fundamental component, but interpretation of all the data is even more critical. The promise of learning analytics is that it can help clearly define these results, and in many cases can help identify next steps to improve outcomes. Here is another video from Kenneth Cukier where he emphasizes the need for an education revolution fueled by data.
Opportunties in learning Analytics
Freemium Services
The sudden and dramatic move to online learning in March 2020 sent school districts everywhere scrambling to find budget friendly eLearning solutions for both the delivery and evaluation of online learning. The freemium model has grown in popularity as a possible solution. By offering basic level services at no cost to educators and their users, companies get their foot in the door to "upsell" premium services later. Formative is an excellent example of a company using this approach.
Formative
Primarily an assessment tool for easy creation and administration of formative assessments--in-class and online--it can also be used for summative assessments, and integrates with Google Classroom, Clever, Canvas, Schoology, and other Learning Management Systems. It features its own analytics tools and visualizations, or the tools in connected Learning Management Systems. Free to use, but the best features require a subscription.
Public - Private Partnerships
There is a market for companies to partner with school districts to develop vehicles for content delivery, grading systems, student information systems, and learning-management systems. MyEducationBC (developed specifically for BC school districts by Follett and hosted by Fujitsu Canada) is one, and FreshGrade (targeted to provide portfolio-based assessment for Middle Schools) is another. You can read a ETEC 522 bio on the founder here.
Chatter High
This BC startup has established itself as a primary source for career exploration curriculum in high schools in Canada and the USA. Utilizing a gamified platform of 10-question quizzes, done 10 times, their algorithms take those 100 personal responses to narrow a student's interests to a limited number of post-secondary schools and training programs, given to the student in a report. New Brunswick's department of education is a recent new client, as well be several large public school districts in Ontario and the USA. They generate analytics reports for classroom teachers, districts, and anonymized data sets for their client post-secondary schools, collaborating with Lets Talk Science for their data analysis. This platform is now branching out to other curriculum areas.
Data Visualizations
Tableau for Education
In North America today, education is still one of the biggest challenges that society faces and this likely will continue into the future. However, there continues to be many people and organizations hard at work everyday trying their best to improve our education systems for the better. A company like Tableau is helping this process by providing a platform for educators to be able to easily monitor learning and student data which allows them to make more informed fact-driven decisions. Dashboards and Visualizations are helping to improve student achievement in a number of different ways from district-level resource and budget allocation to student insights for teachers. Educators are only beginning to see the power of data visualizations and how they can help them make the best decisions for their students. The future of data dashboards and visualizations in education is bright! Click on the link below to read the Tableau whitepaper for more about how dashboards can improve student learning.
“Five Dashboards Improving Student Achievement.”