July 8, 2011
Tech Trends: Learning Analytics
While reading through the 2011 Horizon Report, I was excited to see that “Learning Analytics” is identified as one of their six “key trends” in educational technology. To be honest, I don’t believe I had heard that specific phrase prior to reading the report, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of months.
As an educator in the United States, I have recently found myself thinking that too much emphasis is placed on a high school diploma. Now, I’m not saying that graduating from high school isn’t important! It is. However, I feel that in many cases, emphasis is placed on earning enough points to earn a high enough percentage in a class to earn a credit that will allow a student to receive that diploma. More than once, a student has come into my classroom on the last day of school, desperate to do something that might cause a few more points to be added so that the final grade for the semester goes from a 58% (failing and no credit earned) to 60% (passing and credit earned). Many times over the years, I’ve had parents, counselors, and even administrators ask me to “do whatever it takes” to help a student to “just earn enough points” to pass the class. Whatever happened to focusing on what a student knows, understands, and is able to do?
Learning analytics has the potential to shift the focus back to what a student knows, understands, and is able to do. It also becomes a powerful tool for both the educator and the student. According to the Horizon Report, “Learning analytics refers to the interpretation of a wide range of data produced by and gathered on behalf of students in order to assess academic progress, predict future performance, and spot potential issues.”
I work in online education. The students that I interact with use a Learning Management System (such as Blackboard or Moodle) to access course content and lessons, complete review activities, download study guides and vocabulary journals, take quizzes, post to discussion forums, and submit assignments (such as essays, PowerPoint presentations, or audio files). These LMS’s are designed to collect data. If I know where to look, I can find how many times a particular student logged in to his course within a given time frame, and I can find out how long he stayed in the course. I can see which units he clicked into. I can see whether or not he looked at his Grade Center. However, there is a lot of information the system does not give me. Learning Analytics can change that, and it can allow me to have easy access to the specific information that I need to make decisions regarding the assistance (or the challenges) that an individual student needs.
George Siemens, on elearnspace.org, has created a diagram that shows the possible process of learning analytics:
As you can see from the above diagram, the process of learning analytics takes advantage of all different kinds of information. More than simply registering how many clicks into a unit a student has, the system could pull in information such as performance in other online English courses; whether or not the student attempted the review activities within a lesson; what time of day does the student access the system; what personal information has the student chosen to share with the teacher via the course Message Center; has the student accessed the course resources, and if so, which ones. This information when pulled together could be very helpful for the teacher. If a student fails the quiz, the teacher can’t really know why. Did the student skip straight to the quiz without attempting to the learn the material, or did she try her best to the learn the material? The answer to that question could come from learning analytics, and the answer to that question could be very beneficial to the teacher as he contacts the student to offer help and suggestions.
Learning analytics has the potential to help educators see where a student is having difficulty. It could also have the potential to link a teacher in to extra resources that she could provide for a student. (Why reinvent the wheel and create all new resources every time? There should be an easily accessible, free database of resources that educators can access and share with students.) That student mentioned above, who came in on the last day of class and begged for a few extra points? Learning analytics would help the educator to see what the student has actually learned. Has the student truly met the required standards of the class, or does he need some remediation before he has really earned that credit?
On the other hand, learning analytics has the potential to help educators see where a student can excel. Perhaps there is a student in my online course who is doing very well. He seems to be appropriately engaged in the class, he submits his assignments on time, and he produces quality work. Sounds good, right? Learning analytics could be used to show me that this student is only spending a fraction of the expected time in my class. This doesn’t mean that he should be required to spend more time in my class; it means that he should be pushed to go deeper into the texts. He should be given more challenging assignment topics. Or perhaps he should be allowed to finish the course at an accelerated pace, which would allow him to move on to the next class.
Over the next five to ten years, traditional education in the United States will see a lot of change. I believe that the current, rigid cohort system of education should go away. Just because a student is 16 doesn’t mean that she should be a sophomore in high school. Some students need more time to learn, and learning analytics can help us to identify that. Rather than allowing these students to become frustrated and drop out, educators can use the information provided to reach out to the students in more effective ways that will show them that they can learn if given time. Other students become bored in school and either become frustrated or act out in class. Rather than holding these students back, educators can use the information provided to challenge the students in more engaging ways or allow them to earn their credits faster.
To simplify things, George Siemens also provides this image of the process of learning analytics:
Learning analytics gathers information and makes predictions that allows an educator to adapt course content and lessons, provide personalization, and create interventions when necessary to make the educational process better and more effective for each individual student. It brings us back to focusing on what a student knows, understands, and is able to do. And that’s pretty cool.
Resources:
Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., & Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Siemens, George. (2010, August 25). What are Learning Analytics? [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/25/what-are-learning-analytics/
Carrie Shannon: EDTECH Learning Log 
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