I’m privileged to be attending LAK 2012 and the following Summit on behalf of JISC and therefore the UK Higher Education Sector. Here are a few reasons why I’m in Vancouver;

First and foremost, analytics is one of our priority areas for 2013. We have funded an Analytics Reconnaissance piece to both stand alone as a resource to help the early adopter, but also point the way to opportunities for further work.

Should we go ahead and fund any further work, it may well make sense to collaborate.

In a nutshell; What would be the maximum value and impact JISC could achieve for the UK sector and where are we best placed to get involved?

My pre-conference best guesses include;
Market failure; there are sure to be gaps in service provision to support learning analytics. Should we be building something to fill these gaps? Should we be building something to add value to existing service provision?

Or is it a question of providing uptake within the UK HE sector, raising awareness, nurturing early adopters, providing evidence of benefits and costs
Do we need to nurture new analytic services? Or perhaps a role in helping the sector access big data provision. After all, UK HE is centrally regulated and as such we do have joined up sector level data sets. Perhaps this is a unique opportunity for UK HE to exploit for competitive advantage.

We’re certainly going to need to address the softer, human issues as well as more traditional PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal and ethical) themes.

During my time at LAK 12 I’ll be looking for good ideas and intelligence; I hope to encounter and report on the early benefits others are describing. I’ll try to identify aspects that are demonstrably of use to the UK HE sector now. I hope to discover what are the gaps in the existing market offer.

JISC has been approached to join in with SOLAR (Society of Learning Analytics Research). I hope to gain a better understanding of the benefits JISC might see should we join in. Maybe some understanding of the cost benefits of joining versus not joining.

LAK 2012 has doubled in size from LAK 2011. It seems to be a rapidly expanding and vibrant community. I hope to be enlightened as to the maturity of the field and how close it is to realising real world benefits. I hope to meet those people championing institutionally led approaches.

In addition I’m keen to meet anyone taking the broader view; those people / organisations looking at analytics to support not just learning (Learning Analytics) but the other key business areas addressed by the modern University and the processes that support these.

JISC is changing. We’re transforming into a new organization. We’re taking stock and the sort of intelligence gathering I’m aiming for here will help to inform us.

We’ll be even more motivated to transform the student experience, support research excellence, achieve cost savings and be competitive. We’re developing a new strategy to help guide us to meet those goals and we’ll be relentlessly focusing on impact and how we help higher education institutions.

Learning Analytics and the wider applications seem to be very much on topic to meeting some of these goals.

If you’d like a chat about any of this, in particular if you’re in Vancouver this week, do get in touch; @mylesdanson m.danson@jisc.ac.uk