An exercise in institutional reflection: the learning analytics readiness instrument (LARI)

Abstract

While the landscape of learning analytics is relatively well defined, the extent to which institutions are ready to embark on an analytics implementation is less known. Further, while work has been done on measuring the maturity of an institution's implementation, this work fails to investigate how an institution that has not implemented analytics to date might become mature over time. To that end, the authors developed and piloted a survey, the Learning Analytics Readiness Instrument (LARI), in an attempt to help institutions successfully prepare themselves for a successfully analytics implementation. The LARI is comprised of 90 items encompassing five factors related to a learning analytics implementation: (1) Ability, (2) Data, (3) Culture and Process, (4) Governance and Infrastructure, and, (5) Overall Readiness Perception. Each of the five factors has a high internal consistency, as does the overall tool. This paper discusses the need for a survey such as the LARI, the tool's psychometric properties, the authors' broad interpretations of the findings, and next steps for the LARI and the research in this field.