My time in New Orleans continues at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting. Yesterday was the second day of the meeting and  here is a recap of the sessions I attended.  The general session had Jules Polenetsky (CEO, Future of Privacy Forum) give a most important presentation about privacy issues in this era of big data.  He identified a number of examples of where infringements brought on by online services, smart home devices such as Alexa, and wearable technology were emerging.  I thought it a good presentation that raised a number of important issues for educators to consider.

I then attended a session by the Online Learning Consortium’s Jill Buban and Nori Barajas-Murphy. They brought the audience up to date on the OLC Research Center for Digital Learning and Leadership.  They specifically demonstrated the Practical Evaluation of Digital Learning (PEDL) toolkit that they are developing.

Chuck Dziuban led an excellent session entitled, A Collaborative Research Agenda for Evaluating the Impact of Adaptive Learning, that reported on  a cooperative adaptive learning research project going on the University of Central Florida, Colorado Technical University and the research unit of the platform provider Realizeit.  He and his colleagues (Patsy Moskal, Constance Johnston and Colm Howell were most knowledgeable and provided a very balanced view of the adaptive learning development (“it is not a silver bullet”) at their institutions.

I had dinner at night with colleagues Patsy Moskal, Chuck Dziuban, Karen Swan, Mary Niemiec, Liz Ciabocchi, and Colm Howell.

Today I will lead a panel discussion on Higher Education’s Digital Future… Stop by at 8:30 in the Acadia Grand Ballroom.

Tony