Horizon Markets: Interest in Learning Analytics

UPDATE 6/21/11: This Horizon Prediciton Market has officially closed. It's Bullish!

The 2011 Horizon Report was released February 14, 2011 at the EDUCAUSE ELI annual conference and the NMC/NITLE Markets have been particularly active lately, especially today as the Mobile Topic market (question on the features of the iPad 2) should close with today's announcement of the new Apple device.Our most recent question looked at the growth of interest in Game-Based Learning by tracking publications in Google Scholar .

The newest market released looks at Learning Analytics,a new topic for the Horizon Project, making its first appearance in the 2011 Horizon Report in the four to five year horizon. As described described there:

Learning analytics promises to harness the power of advances in data mining, interpretation, and modeling to improve understandings of teaching and learning, and to tailor education to individual students more effectively. Still in its early stages, learning analytics responds to calls for accountability on campuses across the country, and leverages the vast amount of data produced by students in day-to-day academic activities. While learning analytics has already been used in admissions and fund-raising efforts on several campuses, “academic analytics” is just beginning to take shape.

Given this is such a new topic we do not have many analytics on the use of learning analytics, so we are looking at the interest in this topic as measured by conference presentations on the topic that have been posted in Slideshare. We are measuring via a google search for presentations in the last year that feature the term between now and June 20, 2011. At the time of the market opening, the search yielded 45 items. And there ought to be an increase in this number given the series of upcoming academic conferences -- the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2011 is going ion right now.

How is this market going? We have the markets widget to show the current state:

Join the activity with the newest question at http://markets.nitle.org/markets/35167 and learn more about how to play the futures game at http://markets.nitle.org/