Practitioner Track

Research Track | Workshops & Tutorials | Posters & Demo | Doctoral Consortium

Practitioner Track Chairs

  • Ani Aghababyan, McGraw-Hill Education, USA
  • Sweet San Pedro, ACT

A significant portion of learning analytics work is spearheaded by practitioners who rely on informal pilot studies and iterative design-based research rather than traditional academic research. Both approaches help to improve the state of the art. 

Evaluation Criteria

The Practitioner Track provides a way of sharing thoughts and findings that stem from learning analytics project implementations. The intention is that these conversations will contribute to a shared understanding of interventions, and the factors that influence their success. The Practitioner Chairs will be looking for submissions that offer unique or distinct insight into intervention designs, analyses, and/or the processes surrounding their implementation. Valuable learning can be gleaned from interventions whether or not they achieved their goals and so submissions will not be rejected on the grounds that the project was unsuccessful. The following criteria will guide reviewers when selecting submissions, although we recognise that this list may not be applicable to all submissions. Criteria are provided to guide practitioners in the preparation of their submissions.

  • Implementation track record: The project should have been used by an institution or has been deployed on a learning site. There are no hard guidelines about user numbers or how long the project has been running.
  • Learning/education related: The submission should describe work that addresses learning/academic analytics, either at an educational institution or in an area (such as corporate training, health care or informal learning) where the goal is to improve the learning environment or learning outcomes.
  • Institutional involvement: All submissions should include information collected from people who have used the tool or initiative in a learning environment (such as faculty, students, administrators and trainees).
  • No sales pitches: While submissions from commercial suppliers are welcomed, reviewers will not accept overt (or covert) sales pitches. Reviewers will look for evidence that the presentation will take into account challenges faced, problems that have arisen, and/or user feedback that needs to be addressed. 

Suggested Topics

While submissions on all topics related to learning analytics will be considered, these topics are likely to prove most interesting to conference attendees:

  • Teaching and learning innovations through the use of analytics: How have analytics enabled innovation in teaching practice and the learner experience?
  • Instructional/Educational designers: This community thinks in great depth about aligning pedagogy and assessment — where does analytics design fit?
  • Lessons learned:  after going through a learning analytics project, what lessons were learned in:
    • implementation: what factors surfaced that affected the success of the project?
    • outcomes: What were the stated measures of success of the project? Were they met during the implementation? Did other unexpected results appear?
    • Innovative new tools/techniques: Share newly developed tools or approaches to learning analytics that have been implemented at an institution. Reviewers will look for unique characteristics and at how deployment has influenced development.
  • Application of standards: A project making use of data/analytics standards and illustrating the benefits of such an approach.
  • Collaboration and sharing: How are groups of institutions/practitioners partnering to solve shared problems in the learning analytics space?
  • Solving a new problem: Traditional analytics approaches tackle questions like ‘Did the student master this topic?’ or ‘Will this student pass that class?’ Has the submission tried to answer a novel question in the learning analytics space?

Submission Types and Guidelines

Indicate in your submission whether you want your Practitioner Track submission to be considered a a) Presentation, b) Poster or c) Demo.

Presentation submissions (20 minutes presentation plus 10 minutes Q&A)

Presentation sessions are designed to highlight individual institution or instructor/practitioner uses of learning analytics. Topics can range from single implementations of learning analytics tools / initiatives up to the deployment of cross-functional systems or larger projects that have been rolled out at scale. Practitioner presentations are part of the main conference schedule and will be held in integrated sessions with research presentations. Presentation submissions should be 4 to 6 pages in length using the Companion Proceedings Template.

Presentation submissions should include:

  • Title (up to 12 words)
  • Abstract (up to 100 words)
  • Keywords (up to 6)
  • Content should include: 
    • Problem you are trying to solve
    • Analytical method(s) used to address the problem
    • Synopsis of implementation process
    • Results/findings of implementation and next steps
    • What the audience should take away from the presentation
  • Presenter(s) bio/information (up to 100 words)

Poster submissions

These should include a concise report of recent findings or other types of innovative work. Alternatively, a poster submission may be work that you prefer to present interactively. Poster submissions should be up to 2 pages in length using the Companion Proceedings Template.

Demonstration submissions

These should include a one-page abstract and movie link using the Companion Proceedings Template and a demo movie no more than five minutes in length.

Submissions to Practitioner Track

  • Practitioner Track Presentations, Posters, and Demo submissions  are double-blind reviewed, so please remove all identifying details from text. However, Demo movies do not need to be double-blind since it can be hard to disguise real systems
  • Use the Companion Proceedings Template
  • Submit via the EasyChair LAK19 submission system 
  • At least one of the authors must register for the conference before a Practitioner Track presentation, poster or demonstration can be included in the Companion Proceedings.

Review Process

Practitioner submissions will be reviewed by at least two reviewers chosen by the Practitioner Chairs. The reviews will be shared between the reviewers, pending final review by the Practitioner Chairs. Submissions with the highest evaluations will be accepted.

The Practitioner Papers with the highest review rankings will be nominated for the ‘Best Practitioner Paper Award’, and identified in the Program and Proceedings. A committee formed from current and past LAK Program Chairs will select the winning paper, and the award will be made during the conference.

At least one of the authors must register for the conference before a submission can be included in the Companion Proceedings. 

Proceedings

Practitioner contributions will be published in the LAK19 Companion Proceedings, archived with open access on the SoLAR website. 

Important Dates

All deadlines are 23:59 GMT-11

Submission deadline for main track categories (Research, Practitioners, Workshops, Tutorials and Doctoral Consortium) 1 October 2018
Notification of acceptance for Workshops and Tutorials 15 October 2018
Accepted Workshop Open for Submission 29 October 2018
Notification of acceptance for Research, Practitioners, Doctoral Consortium 19 November 2018
Submission deadline for Posters/Demos and Workshop Papers 3 December 2018
Camera-ready papers for ACM Proceedings: Full Research Papers and Short Research Papers 17 December 2018
Notification of Acceptance for Posters/Demos and Workshop Papers 4 January 2019
Early-bird registration closes 8 January 2019
Camera-ready papers for Companion Proceedings 4 February 2019
LAK19, Tempe, Arizona 4-8 March 2019