More on the 2011 Horizon Report

Yesterday, we provided highlights of the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual joint publication released by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC), that identifies six areas of emerging technology that, within the next five years, are projected to have "significant impact" on higher education and enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations.

Today, I wanted to draw particular attention to the inclusion of Learning Analytics. Although still in its early stages, the report describes a few cases in which learning analytics have been applied with "sophistication" and "in tandem with productive theories of contemporary learning practice" to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment.

• Education. Students in education programs can utilize learning analytics to incorporate into their pedagogy when they leave the academy. The use and study of analytics in their coursework can better prepare them to be leaders in this emerging area of education.
  

• Instructional Technology. Instructional technologists can use learning analytics to help educators design systems and approaches to better measure student outcomes and faculty development. These approaches can help lead the way to new ways of thinking and new technologies to better track, visualize, and mine data for application in learning analytics.
  

• Nursing. By analyzing the access patterns of students watching online videos captured from class lectures, the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University is able to track who is watching videos, how much they are viewing, and how they are viewing the content.

Have you seen other examples or instances that learning analytics have been successfully applied? Let us know in the comments below.