Learning, Schooling, and Data Analytics

Since the 1960s, methods for extracting useful information from large data sets, termed analytics or data mining, have played a key role in fields such as physics and biology. In the last few years, the same trend has emerged in educational research and practice, an area termed learning analytics (LA; Ferguson, 2012) or educational data mining (EDM; Baker & Yacef, 2009). In brief, these two research areas seek to find ways to make beneficial use of the increasing amounts of data available about learners in order to better understand the processes of learning and the social and motivational factors surrounding learning. The goal of these efforts is to produce more efficient, more effective, and deeper learning in the context of increasingly positive learning experiences.