Delivering the keynote address at the 2012 Strata conference, Steve Schoettler emphasized how learning analytics can be used to improve education [1] — a process that has been slow to take effect given the lack of data application, The Huffington Post reports.
Schoettler is the founder and CEO of Junyo [2], a company that applies the tools and techniques utilized by websites like Google and Facebook to develop innovative strategies for improving education.
Schoettler began his talk by pointing out that educational data collected by the federal government takes two years to process. For instance, a chart depicting U.S. average reading scores released in 2011 shows data only up to 2009. By not making use of data, there is no system in place for generating continuous feedback — a detail that has stalled educational improvement.
“If we’re going to bring data to education, we have to know what to measure, and the most important thing to measure is the student, the learner — that’s the center of education processes,” Schoettler says.