This commentary elaborates on the role of "grounding" as a focal theoretical concept and aims to contextualize the claims formulated by Schneider and Pea (2015, this issue) in previous CSCL discussions. It provides fingerposts for enriching and refining the concept of grounding from a pedagogical point of view. It also suggests using the…

The article, "Distributed Revisiting: An Analytic for Retention of Coherent Science Learning" is an interesting study that operates at the intersection of learning theory and learning analytics. The authors observe that the relationship between learning theory and research in the learning analytics field is constrained by several…

In this commentary on Van Leeuwen (2015, this issue), I explore the relation between theory and practice in learning analytics. Specifically, I caution against adhering to one specific theoretical doctrine while ignoring others, suggest deeper applications of cognitive load theory to understanding teaching with analytics tools, and comment on…

In Miyamoto et al. (2015, this issue) the authors looked to substantiate the presence of the spacing effect, referenced from the psychology literature, in several MOOCs. Their secondary analyses constituted a robust, empirical finding on the correspondence between session distribution and certification but with only a coarse, analogous…

This commentary reflects on the contributions to learning analytics and theory by a paper that describes how multiple theoretical frameworks were woven together to inform the creation of a new, automated discourse analysis tool. The commentary highlights the contributions of the original paper, provides some alternative approaches, and touches on…