ECT Brownbag: Olga Viberg
Designing Culturally Aware Learning Analytics: A Value Sensitive Perspective with Olga Viberg
When: November 14, 2023, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST
Zoom: Click here to register!
In my talk, I will stress the importance of addressing culture when designing and implementing learning analytics services. Learning analytics have been implemented in different countries with the purpose of improving learning and supporting teaching; yet, largely at a limited scale and so far with limited evidence of achieving their purpose. Even though some solutions seem promising, their transfer from one country to another might prove challenging and sometimes impossible due to various technical, social, contextual and cultural factors. I will argue for a need to carefully consider one of these – largely underexplored by the learning analytics community – factors, namely cultural values when designing and implementing learning analytics systems. Viewing culture from a value-sensitive perspective, in this chapter, we: (1) exemplify two selected values (i.e., privacy and autonomy) that might play a significant role in the design of learning analytics systems, and (2) discuss opportunities for applying culture- and value-sensitive design methods that can guide the design of culturally aware learning analytics systems.
Olga Viberg
Olga Viberg has obtained her PhD in Informatics at Örebro University School of Business (Sweden) in December 2015. She has been a lecturer at the School of Languages and Media Studies and at the School of Technology and Business Studies at Dalarna University, Sweden between 2008-2016. Currently she is an associate professor and docent in Media Technology with specialization in Technology-Enhanced Learning at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH.
Viberg's research includes a focus on learning analytics in higher education, the application of mobile technology in education, mobile learning analytics, integration of formal and informal learning environments, design for learning, self-regulated learning, computer-assisted collaborative learning, cross-cultural research and responsible use of student data in education, focusing on the issues of privacy and trust. Olga is currently supervising 4 PhD students. She supervised one PhD candidate (A. Agelii Genlott, finished in 2020), 2 postdoctoral researchers, several visiting researchers, 30 master thesis projects, and > 50 bachelor degree projects during the last few years. She is currently (2023) supervising 6 master thesis projects, several bachelor degree theses, and is supervising two postdoctoral researchers (Digital Futures).
Viberg coordinates the Bachelor Degree course in Media Technology, two PhD courses: Introduction to Learning Analytics and Research Methods in Technology Enhanced Learning and teaches several other courses at different educational levels. Viberg is an active member of the Digital Futures group on Educational Transformation at KTH, https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/about/governance/working-groups/engineering-education/ and several international networks (SIG Responsible Learning Analytics, EUROCALL, MALL etc.) She has served as the keynote speaker at several prestigious international conferences (e.g. EDUCON, IMCL). Viberg has also contributed to the UNESCO policy work on quality of online education and gave a keynote speech in Nov.2021.
Viberg is the main organizer of the Nordic Learning Analytics Summer Institute (2021 & 2022) and a part of the organizing committee of the 12th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference. She has served as the PC chair for the two high ranked conferences in 2023: Learning@Scale 2023 (https://learningatscale.acm.org/las2023/) and ECTEL2023 (https://ea-tel.eu/ectel2023/registration).