Annual Report 2019
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Annual Report 2019 Photo: Eivind Senneset The Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE) is an R&D learning sciences unit, which contributes to international research and national competence development on the use data and data approaches in understanding education and lifetime learning. As such SLATE will advance knowledge by exploring and clarifying concepts such as learning analytics, big and small data in education, assessment for learning, and creativity, learning & technology, in all facets of human learning. SLATE draws together researchers from multiple disciplines including information science, cognitive science, and pedagogy, and thereby conducts integrated research that will advance the frontiers of sciences of learning, as well as inform education practice and policy. MANDATE from the Ministry of Education and Research: • SLATE shall carry out research of high quality on learning analysis*. • SLATE shall be an R&D unit that contributes to national competence and knowledge development within learning analytics. • SLATE shall map and be a central resource for the possibilities and challenges related to the use and research on learning analytics in Norway. • SLATE shall be internationally oriented and seek relevant international collaboration within learning analysis. • SLATE shall through its R&D activity develop and disseminate knowledge to the relevant actors in the Educational sector. • SLATE shall through seeking collaboration influence competence development within the learning analysis disciplines in other milieu in the Higher Education sector. The long term ambition is that SLATE will develop into a broad milieu for the learning sciences by drawing together an even larger spectrum of relevant disciplines such as sociology, design, development psychology, and neuroscience. * the study of the role of data and data analytics for understanding and improving learning, teaching, and education, and covers, among others, the research fields of Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK), Educational Data Mining (EDM), and Big Data in Education. SLATE Annual Report 2019 —2 Director’s Reflections 2019 was our fourth year as a research centre and a time for looking both back and forward. Doing 2019 we strengthened our staff with two permanent additions. We are very pleased that Senior researcher Kristin Børte joined SLATE from the Knowledge Centre for Education, and Gleb Belokrys from Moscow joined our team as a very experienced senior engineer and systems developer. Our journal paper publications rose to 17, and we had 5 book chapters, 5 conference papers, 4 extended conference abstracts, and 6 reports. We organised 1 conference, 2 symposia, and 18 workshops, held 2 courses, and supervised 7 Masters students. During 2019 we had several projects finish and new projects begin. A good deal of our research this year was focused on producing 4 major research reports (see publication list) for the four of the projects that finished, including Activity data for Assessment and Adaptivity (AVT), Adaptive Learning in Mathematics (ALMATH), and Inquire Competence for better Practice and Assessment (iComPAss). Some of the results of these are presented in the section on Research Results and Outputs. What we learned from these projects that cross various educational/training settings is that it is hard to get hold of good data. In ALMATH we found out that Gyldendal does not have access to the raw data on Norwegian students, which is held by KNEWTON, an American company in New York. In AVT, we are working with enabling the sharing of student data across vendors who deliver learning tools to schools in Oslo; while we have access to the raw activity data, sometimes it is not the data that we need to answer the educational questions that we have. In iComPAss in our work with firefighter training we had to develop our own tools to collect data that can be used to inform better training practice. This just illustrates the challenges associated with learning analytics research, and highlights that we have to be conscious and critical to caviller statements such as “data is all around us”. One on-going project that has had some interesting results is the project on learning analytics in higher education. Senior Researcher Mohammad Khalil and systems developer Gleb Belokrys have been working on oXALIC, a learning analytics dashboards for Open EdX, see figure. Data from several projects that are using Open EdX offered through BIBSYS can now see analytics on their courses. These include courses from OsloMet and the UiB Erasmus+ project in BioMedicine. Mohammad was also awarded Peder Sæther research funds and has begun collaboration with the University of Berkeley on learning analytics and CANVAS. SLATE has been actively involved in Decentralised Competence Development, which has a focus on collaborating with schools to raise the competence of teachers. Researchers Cecilie Hansen and Ingunn Ness have been participating in this effort with a focus on teacher inquiry and creativity with schools in Ytre-Midt Hordaland, and in 2020 these effort will expand to Vestland Fylke. New projects in 2019 ranged from, for example, new funding for AVT2, new methods for collecting data in VR, a systematic review on technology in formative assessment, to creating courses on data literacy and innovation for the renovation sector in Norway (funded by Competence Norway). Our new senior researcher Kristin Børte is leading a new project on teacher education and digitalisation which will collaborate with the teacher education program at UiB, led by Director Sølvi Lillejord. The focus will be on the organisation and structure, partnership, and a digital infrastructure to support teacher education. Senior researcher Ingunn Ness has been in demand in 2019 with numerous requests for her expertise on interdisciplinary collaboration and research on both creativity and innovation. Among the most exciting developments is the new Arena for Interdisciplinary Research-based Innovation (Air-Innovation), which is a cross-faculty collaboration that has resulted in conferences, applications and the development of a course, PhD for Innovation: Interdisciplinary problem solving and creativity. In the next years we will be looking for synergies between AIR- Innovation and Teacher training at UiB. In 2019 we continued our outreach tradition of SLATE Guest Lectures and organising various conferences and workshops. Guest lectures visited from Sweden, Belgium, Finland, USA, and the SLATE Annual Report 2019 —3 Netherlands. In June, Ingunn Ness and Professor Emeritus Olga Dysthe organised the International Conference on Dialogic Pedagogy, Creativity, and Learning at UiB with some of the most prominent researchers in the field. Barbara Wasson and Mohammad Khalil organised a National Symposium on Learning Analytics in Higher Education with speakers from Norway, the UK and USA. The symposium targeted University leaders, management and administrators, IT departments, instructors, researchers, and others interested in institutional implementation of learning analytics. Over 50 attended the event and if circumstances permit we will host the second edition in 2020. The 4th annual International Symposium arranged by SLATE and Webster University, Switzerland was held in Geneva in December. SLATE’s Ingunn Ness was an arranger and keynote speaker. The topic was on the Real world impact of creativity in schools, organisations and society. Among important visitors to learn about learning analytics were 21 from the Ministry of Education’s top leader group, and 13 Masters students from the Sorbonne. The highlight of the year for me was my participation in the top political meeting on ICT and learning across education levels held at the Norwegian Government’s beautiful Representation House in Oslo. This meeting drew together national leaders and representative from interest organisations within the educational sector. During my speech (the first one I ever read from notes!) I addressed three issues that I believe are important for education in the coming years: Partnerships between schools, universities, and EdTech; Data; and Artificial Intelligence in Education. Individual statements my colleagues Ola Erstad and Ingrid Somdal-Åmondt Vinje were followed by stimulating panel discussion with our Minister of Education and Integration and our Minister of Research and Higher Education and the approximately 75 guests. This leads to a second highlight, which was participation in a panel at Arendalsuka, which brings together the political-media- research sectors for an exiting week of discussions on current issues. Our panel, arranged by Flexible Education Norway, addressed Do we need artificially intelligent teachers? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a theme that is current in all sectors and we see a resurgence of interest in it the education sector. With a PhD in AI in education from 1990, I have been enjoying sharing my knowledge about AIEd in 7 keynote talks/panels during 2019. During 2019 we had 41 publications, worked on 37 projects and had 61 collaborators from 18 countries. There continues to be a wide interest in learning analytics and in creativity and innovation as witnessed by our interaction with stakeholders from academia, public sector, EdTech, publishers, the private sector, and research centres. We were involved in over 12 applications for research funding in 2019, with 5 receiving funding (still awaiting news for others), including our first EU project that begins 1 January 2020.