Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, with co-applicant Caroline Haythornthwaite of the University of British Columbia and collaborator Dr. George Siemens of Athabasca University, has been awarded $478,622 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) through an Insight grant for their new research initiative “Learning Analytics for the Social Media Age”.

“SSHRC offers one of the most competitive and prestigious research funding sources in Canada,” says Fiona Black, Associate Dean of Research. “In addition to its major contribution to new knowledge, Dr Gruzd’s project will directly benefit graduate students at the School of Information Management and is another reflection of the growing research strengths in Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management.”

This major five-year research initiative is designed to address the question “How do social media networks influence educational models?” The project involves developing novel learning analytics for the social media age. Learning analytics is “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.” One of the primary goals of this initiative is to devise new theoretical and technical solutions that will help educators and researchers to study learning processes in social media. Another goal of the initiative is to provide educators and learners with tools that will help them to determine whether their particular use of social media is beneficial to their teaching or learning.

Story source: Social Media Lab