Grant: Engage Grants Program

The use of technology in learning and education is on the rise. Not only is technology being increasingly used in traditional on-campus delivery, but there is a steady growth in the number of students who take online courses. With such steady growth of the use of technology in learning education, there is a challenge greater than ever before to produce technology that can effectively serve each and every learner by offering a personalized and optimized learning experience. Equally as important, new technology should respond to the needs of education, such as increasing the completion rates of post- secondary students. Building on the principles of data mining, semantic technologies, user modeling, and social network analysis, in this industry-collaboration project, we will investigate and propose new analytics for optimizing learning experience in social learning environments. In particular, the anticipated outcomes of this six-month project are as follows: 1) Develop analytics for evaluating learning quality in social learning environments; 2) Develop analytics for evaluating levels of concept comprehension in social learning; and 3) Train at least two graduate students in the area of learning analytics.