Using learning analytics
Learning analytics can help improve the quality of education, enhance study success and prevent study delays or drop-outs. It seems to hold great promise for education. But how can you best utilise the potential of learning analytics, and what are the benefits?
Organising the use of learning analytics
For what purpose do you use learning analytics? And how do you support teachers in using learning analytics?
Bepalen van doelen voor inzet studiedata
De doelen om studiedata in te zetten, zijn voor alle instellingen anders. Ze moeten passend zijn bij bijvoorbeeld de omvang, de omstandigheden, de onderwijsvisie en het soort studenten van een instelling. Iedere onderwijsinstelling zal daarom eigen ambities moeten formuleren waarom en hoe zij studiedata willen gebruiken.
Waar begin je als je wilt starten met het inzetten van learning analytics? Wat wil je bereiken. Wie moet je erbij betrekken? En waar moet je verder aan denken? Het discussiemodel helpt je een start te maken. Binnen het discussiemodel ga je in op je doelen, doelgroep, gebruik van data, visie en beleid, stakeholders, privacy en ethiek.
Dutch educational institutions carried out learning analytics experiments together with SURF in 2017 and 2018, and made study trips on learning analytics to the UK in 2019. We have learned that the use of learning analytics is only successful if it is done with a clear purpose.
Determining goals for the use of learning analytics
The aims of using learning analytics are different for each institution. They must be appropriate to the size, circumstances, educational vision, and type of students of an institution, for example. Each institution will therefore need to formulate its own ambitions as to why and how it wants to use student data.
Vision and strategy workshops
SURF offers vision and strategy workshops for educational institutions. We help institutions clarify their ambitions regarding the use of learning analytics. We make the insights that participating institutions gain during a vision creation process available to the other institutions. We bring institutions with similar visions into contact with each other and bring other perspectives into the discussion.
Position paper use of learning analytics
SURF is investigating what values the institutions share regarding the use of learning analytics, what common needs there are regarding a learning analytics infrastructure, and what preconditions we share regarding algorithms, privacy, and ethics.
Support for instructors
The successful deployment of learning analytics stands or falls with the way in which learning analytics is applied in educational practice. It only really works if we manage to ask the right questions of the data. That already begins when designing online education.
The report Learning analytics in education: an educational perspective contains a number of cases in which we show how this can work in educational practice. The report supports and inspires instructors and educational developers to apply learning analytics within online education. In this way, they can collect data about how students click through an online environment, which videos they watch, what other digital footprints they leave behind and what that says about their learning behaviour.
Publications
How data can improve the quality of higher education
What is the potential of learning analytics for Dutch higher education.
Statistical handbook of study data
Learn about a common standard for testing analyses on study data in higher education to ensure the validity and reliability of policy recommendations.