Embedding Learning Analytics in a University: Boardroom, Staff Room, Server Room, Classroom

Here’s the open access preprint of a chapter to appear in a forthcoming book edited by Olga Viberg and Åke Grönlund. I was grateful to be invited to contribute to this, and it was an enjoyable reflective journey figuring out how to tell the story. I hope you enjoy exploring the four rooms!

Buckingham Shum, S. (2022). Embedding Learning Analytics in a University: Boardroom, Staff Room, Server Room, Classroom. In Viberg, O. and  Grönlund, Å. (Eds.), Practicable Learning Analytics, SpringerNature.

Abstract: In this chapter, I describe and reflect on the last 8 years at an Australian public university, inventing, piloting and evaluating Learning Analytics tools, specifically focused on data-driven personalised feedback, leading in some cases to integration with the institution’s learning technology ecosystem, and accompanied by staff training and support. I will summarise this as conversations in the Boardroom, the Staff Room, the Server Room and the Classroom, reflecting the different levels of influence, partnership and adaptation required to introduce and sustain novel technologies in the complex system that constitutes a university, or indeed, any educational institution. This chapter is pragmatic, documenting aspects of our work that are typically not the focus in research papers, intending to make a practice contribution.

Keywords: Organisational Strategy, Innovation Diffusion, Personalised Feedback

Dec’22 update: I was invited by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities Centre for Education and Learning to share this work with them at their annual conference so here’s the replay [slides], together with the fab live drawing  by Mark van Huystee!

Live drawing by Mark van Huystee

ALASI2018: Innovating for Impact Workshop

We’re pleased to announce this ALASI 2018 Workshop

Innovating Learning Analytics for Sustainable Impact

Simon Buckingham Shum, Cassandra Colvin, Shane Dawson,
Danny Liu, Pablo Munguia, Yi-Shan Tsai

THE CHALLENGE: INNOVATION + IMPACT

This workshop will explore the strategies that institutions are adopting to balance two key drivers  of learning analytics initiatives:

  1. Research & Innovation: the desire and need to conduct rigorous research (e.g. in order to develop learning analytics that are not available in current products to advance future-oriented teaching and learning strategies; to answer complex questions specific to the institution’s context; to build the university’s research profile)
  2. Sustainable Solutions: the need for robust, usable analytics infrastructure that is trusted by, and useful for, educators, students, the IT division, the data warehouse team, the academic development team, etc… (e.g. to ensure that tools work smoothly, and are easily learnt; to tackle immediate, pressing needs around data; to ensure that data is secure, and reliably captured ).

Typically, these two drivers pull in different directions. Innovative educational technologies typically fail to move beyond the “exploratory, exciting prototype” stage (Scanlon, et al. 2013). In their analysis of the state of the field in Australia, Colvin, et al. (2016) identified two clusters of universities: those who saw analytics as a more research-intensive vehicle for pedagogical innovation, and those seeking vendor solutions for pressing problems (such as student attrition). These conceptions implicate different stakeholders, with different success criteria.

However, are these tensions inevitable, or irreparable?Can the academic invention and rigour of good learning analytics research be harnessed to innovate solutions to strategic problems? Can R&D be accelerated and augmented so that it benefits more end users, more quickly, in sustainable and ethical ways  ? Although far from being solved, progress is being made on these questions (e.g. Buckingham Shum and McKay, 2018). We might also ask how do we advance research in institutions that are not encouraging it, seeing analytics ‘simply’ as a technical solution to be licensed from a vendor?

Please see the full workshop description (pdf), register for ALASI, and post your thoughts here to help seed the event…