Introduction to Learning Analytics and Networked Learning Minitrack

This minitrack addresses the leading edge of technology use and system design to analyze, support, and/or create learning and learning environments. Papers that fit this minitrack fall under new and ongoing areas of learning research that may be referred to as learning analytics, networked learning, technology enhanced learning, computer-supported collaborative learning, and mobile learning. The minitrack title reflects two research areas relating to technology in learning environments. Networked learning is the earlier term, picked up here from conferences of that name that have been ongoing in the UK and Europe since 1998. The focus at the research presented there has been on understanding the actual and potential transformations in learning and pedagogy emerging from the networked connectivity of the Internet. Learning analytics is the newer term, representing a rapidly emerging area of research and practice that aims to describe and evaluate the definition, collection, analysis, and use of data resulting from technology use. Such analytics encompasses system design to create better models and evaluations of learning on and through information technologies and new media, as well as evaluations of the learning process itself that can be accomplished based on data traces resulting from the use of technology, and of the social and ethical inputs and ramifications from such analytics. For this year's minitrack, the scope was wide to include papers that explore technology use to examine how social learning happens, use data from learning environments to support learning processes, and examine new practices of formal and informal learning on and through the Internet. The minitrack comprises these three papers selected following peer review of seven submissions.