A presentation on teaching in the current learning environment that encompasses online, blended and lecture capture courses will be Wednesday, Oct. 15, at noon in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library.

“Teaching and Learning in an Evolving Educational Environment” will be given by Charles Dziuban, an educational researcher and internationally recognized expert on blended learning environments.

The public talk is sponsored by Emory’s Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods (QuanTM).

Dziuban is director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida (UCF) where he has been a faculty member since 1970 teaching research design and statistics.

In his talk, Dziuban will present:

• outcomes from 20 years of learning analytics research through an effective teaching and learning perspective
• a comparison of student success rates across course methods and instructors’ preferences for instructional formats
• the characteristics of excellent instructors from the student point of view
• examples of how individual faculty members at UCF are employing an analytic approach to improving their courses

“I thought that I understood it until I tried to teach it,” says Dziuban of using learning analytics to improve research design and teaching.

He plans to discuss his third point, characteristics of excellent instructors, using concepts such as the Anna Karenina Phenomenon. That phenomenon, Dzuiban explains, comes from the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s novel, “Anna Karenina.” “It has to do with the fact with that things can go wrong any number of ways,” he says, noting that Jared Diamond used this phenomenon in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

Lunch will be served at the talk and an RSVP is required by Friday, Oct. 10, in order for organizers to get an accurate attendance count and address dietary needs.

This is the first of five presentations in the 2014-2015 QuanTM Learning Analytics Speaker Series.  For more information about the speaker series, please visit the website for Emory’s learning analytics community  or contact Timothy Harfield, Scholar in Residence (Learning Analytics), at tharfie@emory.edu.