Journal of Learning Analytics - inaugural issue

ISSN 1929-7750 (online)
Homepage: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/JLA
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/jla_editorial
Contact:  jla.editorial at gmail.com

Submission deadline (inaugural issue): April 30, 2013

Overview
Journal of Learning Analytics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, disseminating the highest quality research in the field. The journal is the official publication of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). With an international Editorial Board comprising leading scholars, it is the first journal dedicated to research into the challenges of collecting, analysing and reporting data with the specific intent to improve learning and teaching practice. “Learning” is broadly defined across a range of contexts, including informal learning on the internet, formal academic study in institutions (primary/secondary/tertiary), and workplace learning.

The journal seeks to connect researchers and developers with practitioners, creating and disseminating new tools and techniques, studying transformations, and providing ongoing evaluation and critique of the conceptual, technical, and practical outcomes. The interdisciplinary focus of the journal recognizes that computational, pedagogical, institutional, policy and social domains must be brought into dialogue with each other to ensure that interventions and organizational systems serve the needs of all stakeholders. The journal seeks to bring into dialogue the intersection of the fields of Education, Computation and Sensemaking.
Journal of Learning Analytics welcomes papers that either describe original research or offer a review of the state of the art in a particular area. The journal also welcomes practice-focused papers that detail Learning Analytics applications in real-world settings, provided that they offer innovative insights for advancing the field (see the About section).

Focus and Scope
The following topics are indicative of the journal’s scope:

Education
- Connections between learning analytics and the learning sciences
- Personalization and adaptation in the learning process
- Educational research methods
- Learner modeling
- The study of emotion, flow, and affective data

Computation
- Social network analysis
- Web science, the Semantic Web, and linked data
- Data mining and machine learning techniques
- Natural language processing and text mining
- Recommendation engines

Sensemaking
- Visualization and user experience
- Data and multimedia literacy
- Decision-support
- Organizational dynamics
- Ethical issues

Research Papers
Journal of Learning Analytics welcomes papers that either describe original research or offer a review of the state of the art in a particular area of learning analytics. No submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review elsewhere.  Submissions that extend previously published conference papers are welcome provided that the journal submission has sufficiently been extended (at least 25-30% of new contribution).

The Reflective Practitioner Section
This section of the Journal of Learning Analytics is peer-reviewed and  covers the application of learning analytics across a diversity of contexts. This section spotlights trends and practices; provides new insights and ideas; and analyzes the implications of learning analytics. This section is not intended as an avenue for publication of research articles.

Editors
- Shane Dawson, University of South Australia, Australia
- Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada
- Phillip Long, University of Queensland, Australia

Editor of the Reflective Practitioner Section
- John Campbell, West Virginia University, USA