The calls for more accountability in higher education, the shrinking budgets that often force larger class sizes, and the pressures to increase degree-completion rates are all raising the stakes for colleges and universities today, especially with respect to the instructional enterprise. As resources shrink, teaching and learning is becoming the key point of accountability.                                                           

                                                                                      -- Malcolm Brown & Veronica Diaz (2011, p. 41)

 

We have passed from an industrial to an information age. One consequence of this move is the information overload envisioned by Vannevar Bush (1945) over a half century ago. The growth of data often seems to threaten the ability of organizations to make sense of it. However, the gargantuan amount of available data also has enabled the development of new techniques that have changed the very ways businesses are managed (Brynjolfsson, Hitt, & Kim, 2011; Davenport, & Harris, 2007), doctors make diagnoses (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1999), and baseball managers recruit and coach players (Kehri, 2011). Advances in knowledge modeling and representation, data mining, and analytics are creating a foundation for new models of learning effectiveness, knowledge development and analysis (Markoff, 2011). Perhaps nowhere are these new models more needed than in education.

The Sloan-C Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) advisory panel on learning effectiveness is soliciting articles on the use of analytics in online learning for a special issue to be edited by Karen Swan. Full first drafts of proposed papers should be submitted to JALN (http://jaln.sloanconsortium.org on or before April 1, 2012. Final revised copies of your papers will be due by May 25, 2012.) and emailed to Karen at kswan4@uis.edu

To submit a paper, follow the directions at http://sloanconsortium.org/jaln_guidelines#_Toc297760705

Please contact Karen (kswan4@uis.edu) with any questions.

 

The Sloan-C Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) Advisory Panel

University of Central Florida

University of Central Florida

American Public University System

University of Pretoria

City University of New York (CUNY)

University of Illinois Springfield

Rochester Institute of Technology