Tweetology of Learning Analytics: What does Twitter tell us about the trends and development of the field?

Abstract

Twitter is a very popular microblogging platform that has been actively used by scientific communities to exchange scientific information and to promote scholarly discussions. The present study aimed to leverage the tweet data to provide valuable insights into the development of the learning analytics field since its initial days. Descriptive analysis, geocoding analysis, and topic modeling were performed on over 1.6 million tweets related to learning analytics posted between 2010-2021. The descriptive analysis reveals an increasing popularity of the field on the Twittersphere in terms of number of users, twitter posts, and hashtags emergence. The topic modeling analysis uncovers new insights of the major topics in the field of learning analytics. Emergent themes in the field were identified, and the increasing (e.g., Artificial Intelligence) and decreasing (e.g., Education) trends were shared. Finally, the geocoding analysis indicates an increasing participation in the field from more diverse countries all around the world. Further findings are discussed in the paper.