Wolfgang Greller made some interesting comments on his blog about an interview with me on Learning Analytics.

I’m a bit puzzled by his remark that

Duval being a computer scientist strongly believes in the power of data and the revelations it holds.

Actually, I am not sure what would be the alternative to ‘believing in data’ – not believing in data? Isn’t confronting theories with data one of the core activities of any science?

For me, there lies one of the most important promises of learning analytics: as a research domain, technology enhanced learning is too much a field of opinions – maybe learning analytics can help to turn the field into more of a collection of experimentally validated theories? Into more of a science?

I’m not sure I understand the problem that Wolfgang seems to have with data. Of course, a real issue is selecting what kind of data…