LAK16 workshop: extending IMS caliper analytics™ with learning activity profiles

Educational institutions are evolving away from the one-application-fits-all learning management system to a loosely connected digital learning ecosystem comprising diverse services that increasingly leverage data analytics to drive pedagogical innovation. Yet an ecosystem rich in services but lacking a common approach to measuring learning activity will find data collection, aggregation and analysis time-consuming and costly. The IMS Caliper Analytics™ specification addresses the need for data and semantic interoperability by providing an extensible information model, controlled vocabularies and an API for instrumenting learning applications and systems that log learning events. However, many learning activities have yet to be modeled by the Caliper working group. Engaging the SoLAR community directly in this effort will help ensure that the needs of researchers and other consumers of learning analytics data will inform future versions of the specification. The LAK16 Caliper workshop is being offered with this goal in mind. The half-day session, facilitated by members of Team Caliper, will provide LAK16 participants with an opportunity to extend the Caliper specification by modeling new learning activity profiles. New profiles, new connections and new friendships are expected outcomes.