"Penetrating the Fog of Uncertainty"

I would like to start this blog with the last three statements of Daphne Koller's speech on
"What we're learning from online education" :

What would happen if free education is offered to everyone?

1. Education is the fundamental human right and everyone deserves to have an access to free education, to get  better skills and to live better life.
2. Free education enables lifelong learning experience-education doesn't stop at high school or BA it goes beyond it any time anyone is interested in expanding their knowledge  for different purpose.
3. Providing everyone an access to free education would be an opportunity to find an amazing talent, the next Einstain or Steve Jobs somewhere in the world.

It is amazing that these days there are so many choices, options offered in education. There are many online free courses suggested for everyone where it feels like in real classroom because students are graded given tasks, quizzes and at the end of the course certificates are handed upon successful completion of the course.

Now how do they maintain all these grading system or know their student’s needs. Data collection educators evaluate students’ performance, they see who needs further help to increase the success in learning process, who is at a risk of dropping out a class. The data collection is a great tool that provides insight in learning process, it helps analyze everything in detail. For example, on the data sample I noticed patterns showing the amount of times students logged in and checked their assignments, they attempted the given quizzes, however there was too much information and as an educator I need to know which data will help me understand problems, which data will tell me what I need to know.

LMS (Learning management system) or VLE (virtual learning environment) use the data that predicts students’ success. However MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) mentions another problem about the big data and analytics. According to MOOC big data and analytics are not just evaluating learners’ progress and their future, it also helps see the existing processes of teaching, learning and assessment as well as the academic and administration performance. In other words “Analytics education must be transformative”( Long, Siemens, 2011). Thereby, “Penetrating the fog of uncertainty “ will help educators improve the quality of higher education.