Learning Analytics (LA) is currently a very active topic in education, but its implementation is beset with potential pitfalls for an organisation wishing to develop extensive use of it. Building upon international experience and local knowledge, the EC-funded SHEILA Project (Jan 2016-June 2018) is creating a policy framework for higher education institutions to enable them to design and enact an LA policy for themselves, using an innovative concept mapping approach (ROMA) combined with interviews of key stakeholders in several European countries. It is a partnership of the Universities of Edinburgh (coordinator), Tallinn University, Open University NL and Carlos III Madrid, with Brussels Education Services, Erasmus Student Network and European Quality Assurance Network (ENQA).
In this workshop we discussed with participants our interim data from:
- interviews from senior HEI leaders charged with the implementation of learning analytics to understand the current processes, barriers, and opportunities;
- group concept mapping by international expert panel to identify critical concerns for learning analytics policy;
- benchmark of the learning analytics sophistication in the European HE sector by administering a survey to members of the EUA.
31. Interviews in SHEILA project
Adolfo Ruiz-Calleja, Kairit Tammets, Yi-Shan Tsai, Jeff Haywood,
Maren Scheffel, Pedro Muñoz Merino and Dragan Gasevic
30th, November 2016
34. Methodology: ROMA
34
Macfadyen, L., Dawson, S., Pardo, A., Gašević, D., (2014). The learning analytics imperative and the sociotechnical
challenge: Policy for complex systems. Research & Practice in Assessment, 9(Winter 2014), 17-28.
35. Methodology
35
■ Purpose:
■ Sampling:
To collect opinions from decision makers in
higher education institutions regarding the
adoption of Learning Analytics.
• Policy makers
• Vice-rectors
• Study departments
• Academic offices
• IT departments
40. Results: LA projects and goals
40
■ Exploratory objectives
■ Very often LA projects are related to research
■ Diversity of interests
• Sense of uncertainty
• What can LA do for my institution?
• What can our data tell us?
• UK: correlation between behavioural patterns and
learning outcomes
• Spain: support teachers and improve their performance
• Baltics: improve students retention
41. Results: LA strategy
41
■ For some institutions (UK, Latvia, Finland) LA
is part of their wider strategy
■ Others follow a bottom-up approach: some
projects without connecting backbone
structure
■ Managers become more interested on LA
42. Results: Achieved goals
42
■ Too early phase in many institutions
■ LA is considered useful
■ Awareness of LA, better understanding of
challenges and improvement of data culture
■ In-house software is typically used
• Vendors offer Dashboards or systems to detect drop-out
43. Results: Challenges
43
■ Cultural barriers
■ Little technical experience
■ Human resources
• Data-driven and not question-driven
• Traditional institutional culture
• Lack of awareness
• Lack of data culture
• Many institutions do not feel ready for maintaining a data
management infrastructure
• Little experience on how to deal with online
environments
• Lack of time
• Priorities
44. Results: Ethics and privacy
44
■ Ethical use of data remains a big challenge
■ Privacy laws are very diverse
■ Ethical issues open technical problems
• Although not all of them understand it as a problem (Estonia)
• Clear need of ethical guidelines and solutions
• e.g. Germany and Austria are much more restrictive than UK or
Estonia
• It is very difficult to avoid processing the data of one specific
student if he does not allow it
47. Conclusions
47
■ European universities are in an early stage of
adoption of LA
■ Bottom-up approach from researchers, and
awareness of policy makers
■ Several barriers have been detected,
including ethics
■ There are important differences between
countries
48. Interviews in SHEILA project
Adolfo Ruiz-Calleja, Kairit Tammets, Yi-Shan Tsai, Jeff Haywood,
Maren Scheffel, Pedro Muñoz Merino and Dragan Gasevic
30th, November 2016
60. Go Zone – Privacy & Transparency
1 7
20 31
43 86
2
10
17 24
45
64 65
88
92
9
15
56
60
74
87
34
69
96
6.08
5.44
3.12
ease
3.83 6.03 6.59
importance
r = 0.45
2. transparency, i.e. clearly informing students of how their data is collected, used and protected
88. a clear descrip3on of data protec3on measures taken
10. a clear descrip3on of data usage
17. being clear about the purpose for collec3on certain types of data
24. aligned with data protec3on regula3ons (ins3tu3onal, na3onal, interna3onal)
34. to assure that the collected data is used only for the purpose of improving learning and instruc3on
96. an agreement between learners, teachers and policy makers on regula3ng a proper use of data