ALASI 2015 - AUSTRALIAN LEARNING ANALYTICS SUMMER INSTITUTE

The Learning Analytics Summer Institutes (LASIs) are international community and discipline building events created by the Society for Learning Analytics Research. Based on the success of the last two Australian editions, we are proud to announce Australian Learning Analytics Summer Institute 2015.
ALASI is the main forum in Australia for the exchange of knowledge, innovation, and experiences in the area of Learning Analytics. The event offers a great opportunity to learn about analytics in education, showcase your activities and benchmark results through exposure to the thinking, experiences and feedback of other practitioners and researchers in the field.
The challenge
Learning analytics has been gaining momentum as a community and research discipline. University leaders now consider analytics has high potential to increase the quality of the student experience and outcomes. However, realising this potential requires complex transdisciplinary relationships within and between institutions.
The use of analytics can provide institutions with improvements in admissions, the student learning experience, retention, curriculum design, and overall teaching and learning quality. However, institutions are now facing the challenge of bridging the gap between these desired improvements and the current organisational structures and infrastructures. Some of the pertinent questions at present are: How can data about student progress in a unit of study be made easily available to instructors and to students? What is the impact of using data in relation to a learning design? How can students be better supported throughout their entire educational experience? What type of tools and methods are being used within institutions to bridge this gap?
So, come to ALASI 2015 and contribute to this collective intelligence event to tackle the challenge!
Why come to ALASI?
It is the most established Australian forum to connect with the nation's leading practitioners and researchers in learning analytics.
ALASI is a highly interactive event. The program is comprised mostly of workshops, tutorials and panels. There are no long presentations except two keynote speakers to engage and provoke thought and discussion.
Previous ALASIs have provided an ideal forum to make new collegial connections in the area.
ALASI focuses on how to bridge the distance between the disciplines of pedagogy, educational design, technology, and business intelligence, in order to foster an interdisciplinary approach to learning analytics.
ALASI 2015 will be hosted by the Institute for Teaching and Learning, the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, and the Human Centred Technology Cluster at The University of Sydney.
Keynote speakers
Prof Peter Reimann
Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, and Senior Researcher in the Centre for Research on Computer-supported Learning and Cognition ? CoCo.
Peter received his Masters and PhD from the University of Freiburg, in Psychology. He has worked at the University of Freiburg's Psychology department, in the Learning Research and Development Centre in Pittsburgh, and at the University of Heidelberg, where he was Professor for Educational Psychology before he moved to Sydney. His primary research areas have been cognitive learning research with a focus on educational computing, multimedia-based and knowledge-based learning environments, e-learning, and the development of evaluation and assessment methods for the effectiveness of computer-based technologies. Current research activities comprise among other issues the analysis of individual and group problem solving/learning processes and possible support by means of ICT. Concerning methods and methodology, he has a special interest in cognitive modelling, computational analysis of process data, and application of e-research methods to learning research.
Dr Lyn Alderman
Associate Director, Academic Quality and Standards, Chancellery, QUT.
With over 20 years experience in higher education and 10 years focused on evaluation and learning analytics, Dr Lyn Alderman has a wealth of understanding in institution-wide evaluation frameworks, evaluation of teaching, learning analytics and performance models, and how to engage in broad and rich stakeholder engagement to inform curriculum decision-making. As the sole investigator of an illuminative evaluation into Australian Government policy borrowing and implementation, lead investigator to research Post Occupancy Evaluation (POEs) of education facilities, external evaluator to examine the quality assurance framework of an international university and consultant to reconceptualise the student evaluation framework for a national university, Lyn is judiciously situated to present and disseminate her research and experience in higher education and evaluation. Lyn is the President of the Australasian Evaluation Society (2014 - current) and an Editor of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia (2012 - current).