Michael Atkisson to Present at the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge

Allen Communication Learning Services’ team member will be discussing learning analytics as an interpretive practice with BYU Professor Dr David Wiley.

SALT LAKE CITY (February 24, 2011) — Allen Communication Learning Services’ Michael Atkisson has been invited to present at the inaugural International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge on February 27-March 1, 2011 in Banff, Alberta.

Atkisson will be presenting cLearning Analytics as Interpretive Practice: Applying Westerman to Educational Intervention”. Atkisson is an accomplished instructional designer at Allen Communication, a 30-year courseware development firm and winner of over 50 industry awards. He will be presenting with Dr. David Wiley, Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University.

One of the strengths in Allen Communication’s 30-year history of award winning course design is our penchant for assembling a high quality instructional design team” said Ron Zamir, CEO of Allen Communication. “We are proud of Michael’s invitation to present at this inaugural conference on learning analytics. It is an ideal forum to showcase substantive contributions to the improvement of learning performance.”

The presentation will identify key arguments and applications of learning analytics in educational interventions, the need to interpret quantitative analysis procedures at every phase from philosophy to conclusions, and how to critically examine assumptions that suggests quantitative methodologies in learning analytics are inherently objective.

The Conference seeks to promote research and development of technologies that enhance the advancement, application and transfer of human knowledge, and to enable learning institutions and corporations to interpret and utilize the expansion of available data.

“Learning analytics is the future for answering the most difficult questions in learning and education,” said Mr. Atkisson. “Teachers, trainers, instructors, coaches, councilors and administrators want to know which learners need the most help, kind of help, and what amount of it will produce the greatest effect. Learners want to know if they are on the right track for achieving their learning goals and if not what can they change to improve and how do they get the help to make the changes.”

Atkisson and Wiley’s presentation will demonstrate to attendees that with the vast amounts of data on learners’ behaviors and backgrounds available today and the emerging methods for making sense of that data, research and consensus of that data must proceed with caution with regard to its reliability and validity. Just because there are numbers in the data set doesn’t mean that they are objective observations, or that they can be aggregated.

About Mr. Atkisson

As an instructional designer, Michael Atkisson has eight years of experience in designing, evaluating, and facilitating engaging learning experiences across online, face-to-face, and blended environments. In his five years at Allen Communication Learning Services, courses and software designs he has worked on have won recognition and praise from Fortune 500 clients and professional organizations, all while maintaining aggressive budgets and deadlines. His research includes the application of web-analytics tools to the measurement and evaluation of virtual learning environments and the design of real-time, data enabled decision-aid applications used in social web virtual environments.

About Dr. Wiley

Dr. David Wiley is Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling with responsibility for the research unit. David has been a Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation’s CAREER grant.

About AllenComm

For three decades, the learning and development experts at Allen Communication Learning Services () have helped many of the world’s largest companies sharpen their organizational performance. Allen expands their client’s capabilities by using progressive approaches in custom training, e-learning, and blended learning development, as well as learning portal development and technologies. This bold approach results in highly-customized organizational training solutions that help departments scale and achieve more, while improving ROI.