Learning Analytics in R With Sna, Lsa, and Mpia

This book introduces Meaningful Purposive Interaction Analysis (MPIA) theory, which merges social network analysis with latent semantic analysis to help create a meaningful learning landscape out of the traces left by a learning community. It then allows us to use a learner’s digital ‘analytic traces’ to track their journey through that mapped landscape. Learning is the social co-construction of knowledge – working with yourself and with others.

The hybrid algorithm is implemented in the modeling language R and has packages which capture elements of learners’ work with ‘more knowledgeable others’ and ‘resourceful content artefacts’ via matrix algebra algorithms. The book provides comprehensive package–by-package application examples, and code samples which guide the reader through the MPIA model to show how the MPIA landscape can be constructed and the learner’s journey mapped. It is envisaged that this building block application will allow the reader to progress to use this construct to build further analytic packages to provide student guidance and support further learning decision-making.

 

Fridolin Wild is championing research on performance augmentation ('learning by experience'), consequently looking into wearables-enhanced learning and performance analytics.

Fridolin Wild is a research associate at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University of the UK. His relevant experience as Principal Investigator includes the TELLME project (the learning models work package) and the LTfLL project (coordinating the infrastructure work package). Since May 2009 he has been the deputy coordinator of the European network of excellence STELLAR. He shadows the lead of the work package on community building and sustains this in the ROLE project and a European policy project on TEL Futures, TEL-Map.

Fridolin is the voted treasurer of the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL). He studied information science in Regensburg, Hildesheim, and Munich (all Germany). He founded axon-e interactive media in 1998, and managed numerous commercial and governmental projects there until he left the company in 2003. In 2004 he graduated as magister artium in information science and politology.

Between 2004 and 2009, Fridolin worked as a scientist at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria within the European projects PROLEARN, iCAMP, LTfLL, and ROLE thereby serving as the overall technical manager with an additional work package lead in interoperability of social software learning tools in iCamp, leading the work package ‘infrastructure’ within LTfLL, and leading a work package on community building and sustaining in the ROLE project.