Articles

June, 2016 For many institutions, the idea of beginning a learning analytics initiative may seem overwhelming and complex. There is often the perception that too much work needs to be done before any type of initiative can be explored. You might be surprised to learn that most institutions are already prepared for some type of learning analytics initiative. Whether your institution is ready to use student data and visualize it on a dashboard, or even pursue a small-scale pilot, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of organizational and technical trends supports an overall sense of institutional readiness for learning analytics.

October, 2015 This is the fourth and final installment of our Getting Started with Open Analytics article series. In this article we continue our discussion of how to get started with Open Learning Analytics. Here we discuss the communication component of the Learning Analytics Diamond.

September, 2015 In this article we discuss the role that Student Success Plan (SSP) can play in Open Learning Analytics. Institutions continue to call for ways to improve the success rate for their student population. As increasing academic and personal demands present obstacles to a student's successful outcome, institutions have sought ways to help manage a clear academic pathway, positively impacting student success. SSP allows counseling services, student services, and student support to guide a student to their educational career success.

August, 2015 This is the third of a four-part series of articles on Open Learning Analytics. In this article we continue our discussion of how to get started with Open Learning Analytics. Here we discuss the analysis of learning events within the context of the Learning Analytics Diamond.

August, 2015 This is the second in our four-part series of articles on Open Learning Analytics. We discuss the storage of learning events within the context of the Learning Analytics Diamond.

June, 2015 Unicon has published an article on ways of approaching decision-making about adopting cloud and/or managed services. The article is broken down into six segments. The segments will cover elements including: strategic, financial, architecture, security, process, and people.

June, 2015 Did you know that the origins of the IMS Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) specification date back to 2006? Back then it was just called Tool Interoperability but the idea was the same - create a standard way for applications to integrate. Like many good things LTI took time to mature, but with its first public release in 2010 LTI was on its way.

March, 2015 This is our first article in a four-part series on Learning Analytics. We are so early in learning analytics that it is going to take some time, maybe a lot of time, to get it right. However, as with most complex problems, if you break learning analytics down into its component parts it becomes a lot less daunting.

November, 2014 If you are currently using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), you might want to consider implementing Shibboleth instead. Shibboleth was specifically designed with higher education in mind. Both Shibboleth and ADFS were designed for enterprise application, but ADFS was designed with higher education as an afterthought.

November, 2013 This article is the latest in a long-running series on Unicon.net that covers basic uPortal installation for a local development environment. Its content is pretty close to previous versions, but has been edited and updated to reflect changes in the newest version.