Modeling 21st Century Competencies in a Digital Age

The rapid growth of social media and online communities has dramatically changed the manner in which communication takes place, and most people engage in some form of online asynchronous or synchronous conversation every day. As a result, communication and collaboration are key skills across all aspects of modern life, from learning and working to our political and social life more broadly. In the Learning Analytics Laboratory (LA-Lab), we are working to gain a deeper understanding of online discourse and group dynamics in order facilitate improved educational technologies, wider world access to learning, and more competent and successful citizens. Towards this effort, we have several projects that focus on using language and discourse to uncover the dynamics of socially significant, cognitive, and affective processes in a variety of online educational interactions, including collaborative learning and problem-solving environments, collaborative design networks, and massive open online courses (MOOCs).