Learning Analytics and the Future of Change in the Classroom
How does a university take the inordinate amount of data it collects and somehow make sense of it to build strategies for driving change in the classroom? And is it worth the investment?
According to Andrea Deau, senior director for higher education programs and partnerships at 1EdTech, while there are significant barriers to implementing learning analytics — including potentially significant resource requirements, as well as cultural issues — the benefits to students outcomes and to the institution itself can be enormous. Plus, as Deau sees it, in the near future, some of the resource barriers may be alleviated with new AI tools potentially taking on a good chunk of the workload.
Deau herself has worked in a variety of capacities in higher ed and now works closely with 1EdTech member institutions — universities and colleges — "to meet the challenges they face in the rapidly growing and evolving digital teaching and learning landscape." She was assistant vice provost for online lifelong learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and launched UW's first online undergraduate degree programs, as well as holding other roles in higher ed. 1EdTech is a nonprofit focused on digital transformation in education, including higher ed and K–12.
Deau will be presenting in a higher ed-focused session called "Learning Analytics Is a Journey — We'll Show You the Way" (along with representatives from University of Notre Dame) at the upcoming Tech Tactics in Education conference, being held Nov. 7–9 in Orlando, FL.
Campus Technology had a chance to sit down with Deau in advance of the conference and discuss her insights into developing learning analytics, which she will be discussing in person at Tech Tactics, as well as her outlook for the future of learning analytics.
Campus Technology: Let's start by talking about where we're at with learning analytics in higher education. How widespread is it? How far does it have to go? And how has learning analytics evolved over the years to this point?
Andrea Deau: I can speak to that in the context of our membership, [which is] probably very reflective of where higher education is overall. I would say that it is really on the spectrum, and I would look at it as a maturity model.
By and large, there are only a handful that are really doing expansive efforts with learning analytics at scale. But a lot depends on the resources they have that they can commit to this because it is resource-intensive. And there's a lot of infrastructure to do learning analytics at scale — and staffing requirements.
I would say a lot of our members want to do it. The challenge is, there's a lot of barriers to doing it — the resources, the infrastructure, the buy-in, the change management, and trying to get build capacity. If you're a large institution, you really have to manage that conversation across multiple units on campus. It is an interdisciplinary and cross-departmental collaboration that has to take place to make that happen.
CT: What are the opportunities for the ones who haven't done it yet or may not be using it to the greatest effect?