How learning analytics can finally deliver on its promise
James Hodgkin, Jisc’s head of learning analytics, believes understanding data is more than a dashboard: it can improve data governance across higher education.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) in England are facing extra scrutiny from the government in the shape of regulatory targets and complex curriculum choices for hybrid teaching.
These challenges mean HEIs are striving to understand the student experience, including academic progress, outcomes and wellbeing.
Good data governance – using data already collected for regulatory returns – is critical to tackling these issues. But in our experience for most HEIs data governance is not a strategic priority.
We believe learning analytics (LA) can help organisations to develop the required data governance maturity to tackle these issues. Using it, HEIs can create the foundations of a data ecosystem that reduces workload, increases visibility, helps students achieve better outcomes and teaching staff to do their jobs more effectively.
Learning analytics is more than a dashboard
Learning analytics means using student lifecycle data to understand student engagement. Through this, HEIs can potentially trigger interventions early enough to help improve their performance.
But LA has not achieved widespread adoption in the UK.
There were hopes in the early 2010s that it could deliver better educational outcomes and help HEIs achieve efficiencies that would provide a clear return on investment.
It has arguably become a vague catch-all concept that covers anything that connects data to the student journey. Despite investment, high hopes and lofty ambitions, the promise of learning analytics has not been realised in the HE sector.
Many institutions say they are 'doing' LA, with the key driver being to improve continuation and completion metrics. However, we often find that they have simply created a dashboard of headline metrics.
A complex challenge
HEIs are complex data ecosystems, with large volumes of student data collected and processed across organisational units. Several factors can drive this complexity:
- Separate schools or faculties with their own systems and data standards
- Systems deployed without consideration of data storage or processing best practice
- A lack of top-level understanding or commitment to robust data governance
These factors hinder integrated LA analysis and insight. They can be costly to run and often ensure that any changes to external reporting (e.g. statutory, regulatory) result in an increased administrative burden for organisations.
HEIs can also lack a clear ethical, legal and policy framework for effectively using the student data already being collected.
HEIs can also lack a clear ethical, legal and policy framework for effectively using the student data already being collected. Sometimes it can appear that administrative convenience and imperatives are put before providing the best support to learners.
A robust set of guidelines must be in place to facilitate the collection and use of data in an educational context. Communicating these effectively to staff and students is one of the biggest data governance challenges HEIs face. Data literacy skills may not be valued among student support staff if there is no strategic focus.
Leadership and culture
This challenge requires more than investment and time: it needs leadership from vice-chancellors and executive boards. The key to getting the most out of the data collected by all HEIs is interrogating it with clear strategic aims set by those at the top.
If leaders make implementing LA one of their strategic priorities, we’ve found it can lead the way in wider digital transformation efforts as it touches on many key areas of that process: systems, storage, data and literacy.
If leaders make implementing LA one of their strategic priorities, we’ve found it can lead the way in wider digital transformation efforts as it touches on many key areas of that process: systems, storage, data and literacy.
However, when we see LA progressing as a tech project, without proper senior ownership it often struggles to succeed.
LA is primarily a people and culture project supported by technology. Cultural change is often the hardest part of effectively utilising LA. To be a success, staff and students must understand the aims of using it before the project moves onto data governance and systems implementation.
Steps to get started
At the start of the process, we ask leadership teams three key questions to help them engage more effectively with learning analytics, and therefore data governance:
What do you want to achieve and is this reflected in your policies?
Start by defining what you are going to do with the data. What are your aims, and how will you use the data? We recommend targeting engagement, intervention and student support. How do you want the data to impact these areas?
How important is LA in the institutional strategy?
How high does it sit on the list of priorities for the HEI? VCs and senior managers must be engaged with both the high-level elements of data governance and how this feeds into the technical and resource demands of utilising data to achieve strategic goals. Cultural change is impossible without a defined data strategy supported by an organisation’s leadership.
What state is your data in?
The first practical step towards LA maturity is a comprehensive cross-team data assessment: where is your data; how is it stored? How do different systems interact and what technical solutions need to be in place to open access to siloed data?
Every HEI in the UK can take steps today towards improving their learning analytics maturity. To understand what can help in more detail, download our senior managers' guide.
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