The pulse of learning analytics understandings and expectations from the stakeholders

Abstract

While there is currently much buzz about the new field of learning analytics [19] and the potential it holds for benefiting teaching and learning, the impression one currently gets is that there is also much uncertainty and hesitation, even extending to scepticism. A clear common understanding and vision for the domain has not yet formed among the educator and research community. To investigate this situation, we distributed a stakeholder survey in September 2011 to an international audience from different sectors of education. The findings provide some further insights into the current level of understanding and expectations toward learning analytics among stakeholders. The survey was scaffolded by a conceptual framework on learning analytics that was developed based on a recent literature review. It divides the domain of learning analytics into six critical dimensions. The preliminary survey among 156 educational practitioners and researchers mostly from the higher education sector reveals substantial uncertainties in learning analytics. In this article, we first briefly introduce the learning analytics framework and its six domains that formed the backbone structure to our survey. Afterwards, we describe the method and key results of the learning analytics questionnaire and draw further conclusions for the field in research and practice. The article finishes with plans for future research on the questionnaire and the publication of both data and the questions for others to utilize.