ICALT 2021
Keynote Speakers

 

Sections:

 

Stealth assessment — What, why and how?
Valerie SHUTE, Florida State University research – curriculum

Valerie SHUTESummary of presentation: Games can be powerful vehicles to support learning, but this hinges on getting the assessment part right. In the past several years, we have designed, developed, and evaluated a number of stealth assessments in games to see: (a) if they provide valid and reliable estimates of students’ developing competencies (e.g., in the areas of qualitative physics understanding, creativity, and persistence); (b) if students can actually learn anything as a function of gameplay; (c) the added value of inserting engaging learning supports (cognitive and affective) into the mix; and (d) if the games are still fun with the embedded assessments and supports. My presentation will cover the topic of stealth assessment in games to measure and support important 21st century competencies. I’ll describe why it’s important, what it is, and how to develop/accomplish it. I’ll also provide examples and videos in the context of a game we developed called Physics Playground.

Biography: Valerie Shute is the Mack & Effie Campbell Tyner Endowed Professor in Education in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. Her current research involves using games with stealth assessment to support learning — of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Her research has resulted in numerous grants, journal articles, books, chapters in edited books, a patent, and a couple of recent books – Ke, Shute, et al. (2019), Interdisciplinary design of the game-based learning platform: A phenomenological examination of the integrative design of game, learning, and assessment; Shute & Ventura (2013), Measuring and supporting learning in games: Stealth assessment, The MIT Press; and Shute & Becker (Eds.) (2010), Innovative assessment for the 21st century: Supporting educational needs, Springer-Verlag.

 

Implementing Learning Analytics for Adaptive Learning in Schools
Barbara WASSON, University of Bergen project – curriculum

Barbara WASSONSummary of presentation: Learning Analytics (LA) has emerged over the past 10 years as a promising field of research and domain of practice. The LA field comprises research into the possibilities and challenges in collecting, managing, analysing, visualising and acting on student data with the specific intent to improve learning and the contexts in which it occurs. Implementing learning analytics in the educational sector brings with it new challenges that need to be addressed if we will see widespread use of learning analytics in schools. My presentation will first introduce the field of learning analytics, describing what it is and give some examples. Then I will present the Activity Data for Assessment and Adaptivity (AVT) project, where we are implementing learning analytics in a Municipality in Norway. AVT integrates activity data from a number of digital tools used our schools in order to give teachers an overview over their students’ progress related to the national curriculum, and I will highlight a number of challenges that have arisen.

Biography: Barbara Wasson, Director of the Centre for The Science of Learning and Technology (SLATE) is a full Professor in the Department of Information Science & Media Studies, University of Bergen. SLATE is a national R&D learning sciences centre on learning analytics, funded by the Ministry of Education and the University of Bergen. She was one of the founders of Kaleidoscope, a European Network of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning, sat on the executive committee, and was leader of its CSCL SIG with over 400 members, and is often used as an Expert Reviewer by the European Commission. She is currently co-leader of the Learning Analytics Community Europe SIG (LACE) and leading the Erasmus+ project DALI: Data Literacy for Citizens. Wasson’s article with Paul Kirschner on Learning Design: European Approaches is ranked 7th in the NIDL 2020 top 10 articles on digital learning. Her current research interests include learning analytics, interaction design, learning games, adaptive learning, emerging technologies & learning, teacher inquiry, and socio-cultural perspectives on learning.

 

Finding tools to improve student learning in unexpected places
David WILEY, Lumen Learning work and curriculum

David WILEYSummary of presentation: Building evidence-based teaching and learning strategies into advanced learning technologies can only improve learning if both students and faculty are willing to engage with the features implementing those strategies. Behavioral economics research provides instructional designers with tools to help influence student and faculty behavior in order to make choices that students and faculty, themselves, would judge as being preferable. Once students and faculty are engaging, continuous improvement techniques like RISE analysis that support the conjoint measurement of engagement with features and impact on learning can help instructional designers identify areas where additional design work might yield improvements in student learning. Conversion rate optimization tools and methods from digital marketing provide a framework for conducting randomized controlled trials of proposed improvements that, rather than seeking to optimize revenue in the e-commerce context, can be used to optimize student learning in the education context.

Biography: David Wiley is the Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning. He is also currently a Simon Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, the Education Fellow at Creative Commons, Entrepreneur in Residence at Marshall University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation, and adjunct faculty in Brigham Young University’s graduate program in Instructional Psychology and Technology. His current research includes (1) developing models for the continuous improvement of open educational resources in order to increase student learning and (2) increasing the adoption of evidence-based practices by faculty and students in order to increase student learning.