John’s presentation and emphasis is (admittedly by him) biased toward the LMS/CMS, and much of the talk centered on students’ use of Blackboard. First let me say that my interest and focus is NOT at the CMS/LMS level, but is more at the level of the individual courses—that is, using analytics to inform and improve instructional design, assessment, and evaluation. It is interesting to note that one of the published articles to which John referred: Mining LMS data to develop an “early warning system” for educators: A proof of concept* ( Macfadyen and Dawson in the February 2010 Issue of Computers & Education) had the following to say in the conclusion-(end of section 4.1):
