Professor David Shaffer gave a public lecture on Friday the 27th May 2022 between 15:00-16:30 in Room 5.11 Charteris Land, Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. This video was his presentation entitled ‘Quantitative ethnography: Tools for modeling meaning in learning analytics’.

Quantitative Ethnography is a growing field looking at reasons to – and ways to – keep the concept of meaning central in work on learning analytics and the social sciences more generally. In the age of big educational data, researchers have tools to find ever more subtle patterns in data about teaching and learning – and about teachers and students. But big data presents challenges to traditional research methods, both qualitative and quantitative: challenges to our understanding of utility, reliability, validity, replicability, interpretability, and even significance itself. This talk looks at how quantitative ethnography can help researchers address these challenges.

About the speaker

David Williamson Shaffer is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Wisconsin in the Department of Educational Psychology and a Data Philosopher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Professor Shaffer studies how to develop and assess complex and collaborative thinking skills.

Learn more about Professor Shaffer.

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