Quantified Self : Higher Education New Market Opportunity - Tracking and Measuring Consumers Behaviors and Activities

Quantified Self:
Consumers Self Tracking of Their Behaviors and Actions People have always demonstrated interest in learning about themselves by tracking and measuring their behaviors and activities. Quantified self technologies tap into this interest in the form of mobile apps, wearable devices, and cloud-based services that make the data collection process much easier.

Quantified Self - New Market Growth Opportunity
Quantified self describes the phenomenon of consumers being able to closely track data that is relevant to their daily activities through the use of technology. The emergence of wearable devices on the market such as watches, wristbands, and necklaces that are designed to automatically collect data are helping people manage their fitness, sleep cycles, and eating habits.

New Mobile Applications - Future is Now!
Mobile apps also share a central role in this idea by providing easyto-read dashboards for consumers to view and analyze their personal metrics. Empowered by these insights, many individuals now rely on these technologies to improve their lifestyle and health. Today’s apps not only track where a person goes, what they do, and how much time they spend doing it, but now what their aspirations are and when those can be accomplished.

Capturing Life Every 30 Seconds
Novel devices, such as the Memoto, a camera worn around the neck that is designed to capture an image every half minute are enabling people to track their lives automatically. As more people rely on their mobile devices to monitor their daily activities, personal data is becoming a larger part of everyday life.

Bridge: Quantified Self - Self Actualization
People have always demonstrated interest in learning about themselves by tracking and measuring their behaviors and activities. Students already spend time in formal classroom settings gathering data about themselves or research topics. Quantified self technologies tap into this interest in the form of mobile apps, wearable devices, and cloud-based services that make the data collection process much easier.

Improving Health and Fitness
Popular incarnations of the quantified self movement have materialized in the form of health, fitness, and life streaming tools. The Fitbit, for example, is a small wristband that tracks wearers’ daily activities, including sleep patterns, steps taken, and calories burned.

Real-Time Tracking / Sleep and Diet
Through wireless and automatic syncing between the Fitbit and smartphones, tablets, and laptops, users can see real-time progress across their devices. The Jawbone Up wristband employs similar functionalities, allowing wearers to track sleep, movement, and dietary information that is automatically populated in the accompanying mobile UP app.

New Social Media Opportunity
The experience can easily turn into a social one as people can share their accomplishments with other users and team up to track and achieve specific goals. Other wearables that have garnered worldwide attention have deeply integrated self-tracking tools, including Google Glass and iWatch, but the high prices — and in some cases, the low availability — of these devices have some pundits concerned that quantified self technologies are a luxury for the upper class.

Early Adoption in Higher Education Institutions
The Quantified Self Institute, for example, is an initiative by the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands that brings international and regional partners together to conduct research on different methods of self-tracking. This organization is well positioned to lead the quantified self movement into higher education institutions with recommendations on effective applications.

Relevance for Teaching, Learning, or Creative Inquiry
With the growing use of mobile apps and wearable technology, individuals are creating an exponentially increasing amount of data. The quantified self movement is breaking ground by integrating these data streams in interesting ways. Self quantifiers, for example, can create healthier living plans after monitoring their sleep, exercise, diet, and other important patterns.

People and Pets
The new mobile app Whistle even enables people to do the same for their dogs. It is imaginable that if test scores and reading habits gleaned from learning analytics could be combined with other lifestyle tracking information, these large data sets could reveal how environmental changes improve learning outcomes.

Mobilizing Medical Care
Quantified self technology also has the potential to shape the future of some industries. In the medical field, for instance, doctors are using not only traditional medicine but also data that individuals self-collect, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and sugar levels.

Anticipating Health Problems
Advancements in the field could enable computers to search for patterns and help physicians more accurately diagnose or anticipate health problems before patients step foot into the building. Educators at the moment can only hypothesize about a new era of the academic quantified self, but interest is strong and growing.

Privacy Concerns
One of the current barriers for the mainstream adoption of this technology revolves around privacy concerns. The quantified self movement is about people sharing what they learn about themselves for the greater good, but there is a vulnerability to exposing personal information that will need to be addressed over the next four to five years.

Cost / Benefit Analysis
This could include a cost/benefit analysis about what data should be collected, what data should be shared, who should be responsible for making those decisions, and how to build the most effective and safe online communities of practice.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Be In Charge of your Learning!

As a college student, it never really occurred to me just how vital it is for each and every higher education institution to uphold specific academic standards which ensure quality and relevance of their techniques. Academic assessment is a central element in the overall quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Working at AEFIS has given me more insight as to exactly how this procedure ensures that students are in fact the central gear in their learning experience. Assessment is the student’s ability to evaluate and reflect on their own learning, making a judgment as to their progress and how they could improve.

One of the most significant services the AEFIS platform offers students is access to course details and evaluation results for previous terms. With course details pre-listed, AEFIS gives students the chance to critic a class prior to registration from a professional environment as opposed to the numerous ‘Rate a Professor’ websites which may falsely bias their judgment. With access to the pre-listed course objectives, students can identify from the get-go which instructors are project-oriented, test-oriented or intensive-writing oriented and thus enroll into apposite classes. This in turn facilitates students to gain necessary skills based on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

AEFIS provides students with a thorough, reliable and steadfast course catalog which contains all the details of a course. (All the data is imported directly from institutional data feeds adjusted by administrators). The syllabi details are clearly specified therefore students know exactly what is expected of them prior to enrolling for a course. Personally, I can attest to studying more effectively and in turn getting better grades when I know exactly what it is I’m working towards. The best part is just how easy it is to access all this information. All you need is a basic mobile device with internet capability. AEFIS realized that college students are always on the go and in turn found a way to accommodate this. This shows just how much AEFIS strives to improve student performance.

Throughout our college experience, I feel as though it’s safe to say that there’s always at least one professor whose teaching we absolutely delight in. In most cases, students tend to have professors for only one semester/quarter. AEFIS gives us the chance to commend extraordinary skills where deserved. There’s only so much we can do, so why not express gratitude by taking a few minutes to fill out a survey at the end of a course with warranted positive feedback. It’s always a good feeling to give credit where it’s due. However, it goes both ways given that students also have the right to state whether a course met their expectations or otherwise.

Not only does AEFIS improve student performance but also faculty productivity and administrative efficiency. It keeps syllabi centralized, making assessment and accreditation more efficient. Academic assessment is by no means a piece of cake. It is quite a challenging process because, to some extent, it should be consistent across all departments in a college but yet again allow flexibility, considering each department has its own distinctive goals and expectations. Being at AEFIS has given me the chance to be right in the loop of the academic assessment development. I now know just how fundamental it is to fill out those surveys, review courses prior to enrolling for them and have all my syllabi centralized, which is just a sample of what AEFIS offers. All this for my benefit; higher GPA, convenient access to course details, self-assessment at the end of a course, etc.

Get the best out of your college experience by being in charge of your learning!

                                                                                                                                                Raisa Ochola, AEFIS Team

"Teaching Them How to Think"

Inside Higher Ed

By: Dan Berrett

LINK TO ARTICLE

AEFIS Response:

Pat Hutchings, senior associate at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, was quoted in the recent Inside Higher Ed article “Teaching Them How to Think” by Dan Berrett. Our Team shares his sentiments:

“’Assessment means asking if students are learning what I think I'm teaching,’ said Hutchings. ‘My sense is that what we need to think about now is how faculty can take back assessment. It's been possessed by others, if you will.’”

If you have met with our Team to discuss assessment, you have heard our two mechanisms for measuring student learning:

1. Brain surgery – really opening things up and seeing what students are understanding,

2. Organizing direct and indirect measurements to:

        A. Survey students on what they think they are learning,

       B. Ask students direct questions on specific topics and evaluation results,

      C. Set outcomes and performance criteria,

     D. Survey graduates on job searches and career successes,

     E. Survey faculty on what they think they are teaching.

Our Team recommends the latter because the first can get messy. There is proven success that this sort of data collection can be used for continuous course and programmatic improvement – however, Hutchings notes an important point in the feedback loop. Instructors are the link between students and institutions – they are the faces of higher education. Thus, it is important for faculty to embrace and receive clout for innovating assessment practices.

Focus on curriculum vitae for promotion and publication processes is so great that there is room for valuable involvement and impressive experience in assessment and efforts to improve student learning in higher education. Consider the multitude of assessment conferences with opportunities for publication annually and the environments for assessment discussion and research.

When next making updates to your CV – take a second look at those few areas that you have room for growth: department service, major administrative responsibilities -- and find ways to work with your departments to get involved in assessment.

Becky Joyce, AEFIS Team

"Why Are We Assessing?"

Inside Higher Ed

By: Linda Suskie

LINK TO ARTICLE

AEFIS Response:

When approaching the tasks associated with outcomes-based assessment in higher education, we tend to skip the why and jump right into the how. And to take that jump yet another leap further, we begin to facilitate the how without defined goals that can be communicated to the stakeholders involved. Linda Suskie, Vice President of the Middle State Commission on Higher Education, captures these sentiments in her "Why Are We Assessing?" view. She urges those involved in the assessment of learning in higher education to recognize the succinct goals for assessment. "Assessment is simply a vital tool to help us make sure we fulfill the crucial promises we make to our students and society."

The promises that Suskie remarks on are in question by government policymakers, investors, accrediting agencies, and students and their parents, the consumers of higher education. So, how do we (a) define expectations and (b) demonstrate that we are delivering the expected outcomes for any given student to society?

AEFIS uses the Course Section Dashboard as the platform for faculty to develop effective contracts with students and other stakeholders. This document presents the what and why that is expected of students as form of course outcomes and professional contribution. These contractual documents are more commonly known as course syllabi. They aim to answer to more than what students are getting for their money, but also how they will be able to understand concepts and apply skills as they enter the workforce.

Telling students and stakeholders about the expected outcomes is one thing, but following through is another. This is where direct and indirect assessment come into play. The AEFIS Solution hosts mechanisms for entering and archiving student assessment data. With an end result of student outcomes transcripts -- students walk away from degree programs with more than diplomas, but documented evidence of their performance on outcomes.

This data is most valuable to students, but is invaluable to employers, government policymakers, accrediting agencies and the like. With this information we can start to explain the means for achieving effective personalized learning. Suskie challenges that "…we haven't figured out a way to tell the story of our effectiveness in 25 words or less, which is what busy people want and need…Today people want and need to know not about our star math students but how successful we are with our run of the mill students who struggle with math." We accept the challenge!

Effective learning starts with an understanding of expectations and progresses with continuous communication, evaluation, and revision of those expectations.

Interactive archival systems such as AEFIS serve as vehicles for effective instruction, by connecting assessment to teaching and learning.

Becky Joyce, AEFIS Team