Apereo Foundation Announces Incubation of New Learning Analytics Projects

BALTIMORE - June 1, 2015 - PRLog -- The Apereo Foundation, a non-profit organization which sponsors a range of open source projects and software communities serving higher education, today announced the incubation of several new learning analytics projects. These projects include the Learning Analytics Processor, OpenLRS, and Open Dashboard. The incubation process entails that the projects meet a number of criteria, determined by community collective experience, at a formative stage of development. Incubation serves as an entry point for a project to become a fully sponsored Apereo project. All three projects will make their software available under an open source license.

“The Apereo Foundation community is excited to welcome these new learning analytics projects into our incubation process,” said Ian Dolphin, Executive Director, Apereo Foundation. “These projects are a great step forward in establishing open source learning analytics technology that will be advantageous to the higher education community as a whole.”

These projects are entering the Apereo incubation as single components of the overall Apereo Learning Analytics Initiative (LAI). The Apereo LAI community consists of higher education professionals who share a passion for open source learning analytics projects and processes.

The three open source projects each focus on a different stage of the learning analytics process. The learning analytics process is composed of five distinct stages: “Collection,” in which learning activities are compiled as data pulled from an LMS or CMS; “Storage,” where these activities are recorded and stored; “Analysis,” in which models process data to identify at-risk students; “Action,” a stage where intervention techniques can be employed; and “Communication,” where dashboards are used to display end data results.

The Java-based Learning Analytics Processor, developed by Marist College, is entering Apereo incubation as a tool that aids in the “Analysis” stage of the learning analytics process. The Learning Analytics Processor is used to provide predictions on student success to feed into student intervention systems that will provide a low-cost, open source method to implement learning analytics at institutions.“One of the goals of the Learning Analytics Processor (LAP) work to date has been to automate the Marist OAAI Student Early Alerts and Risk Assessment model and create a framework for automation and execution of other type of learning analytics,” said Josh Baron, Assistant Vice President, Information Technology for Digital Education at Marist College. "Under incubation we will be working to build on the prior LAP work to create a highly scalable architecture that leverages other open-source "big data" solutions."

As with the Learning Analytics Processor, the other two learning analytics projects, OpenLRS and Open Dashboard, also focus on particular stages of the learning analytics process. OpenLRS is an open source Learning Record Store (LRS) used for the “Storage” stage of the process. A LRS is a data repository used to house learning activity data from the “Collection” stage of the learning analytics process. The LRS can be integrated with activity collection systems and analysis models. Open Dashboard is a visual display summary of the results from the entire process as the “Communication” stage. This dashboard is a vital component of the process as it informs institutions of the overall impact or improvement resulting from implementation of the entire learning analytics process. OpenLRS and Open Dashboard are funded by the Uniformed Services University.

To learn more about Apereo LAI, visit http://bit.ly/1KlweLR. For more information on Apereo and the projects it supports, please visit www.apereo.org.

About Apereo
The Apereo Foundation was formed by the merger of Jasig and the Sakai Foundation in late December 2012. Sakai and Jasig had pioneered the production and adoption of open source software for higher education for over ten years. Apereo will take that work further, providing a more rational and improved organizational umbrella for a range of projects and software communities serving higher education. The core mission of the Foundation is to "assist and facilitate educational organizations which collaborate to foster, develop, and sustain open technologies and innovation to support learning, teaching, and research.” Learn more at www.apereo.org.