UCL Knowledge Lab Seminar Series: Aligning Learning Analytics with Classroom Practices and Needs

How do educators make use of data to support their student’s learning, and where does learning analytics fit into that?

Dr Simon Knight, University of Technology Sydney

View Recording

Description

Educators are increasingly asked to work with data and technologies such as learning analytics to support and provide evidence of student learning. However, what learning analytics developers should design for, and how educators will implement analytics, is unclear.

Learning analytics risks the same levels of low uptake and implementation as many other educational technologies if they do not align with educator practice and needs. How then do we tackle this gap, to support and develop technologies that are implemented in practice, for impact on learning?

At the University of Technology Sydney, Dr Simon Knight takes a participatory design-based approach to designing and implementing learning analytics in practice, and understanding their impact. In his research, he has identified existing practices with which learning analytics may be aligned to augment practice.

This talk introduces some of these projects, particularly drawing on work in developing analytics to support student writing (writing analytics), giving examples of how analytics were aligned with existing pedagogic practices to support learning. Through this augmentation, supported by design-based approaches, Dr Knight argues that research and practice can be developed in tandem.