From learner-centred to learning-centred analytics: reframing the learning analytics paradigm
About this session
Dr Cassandra Colvin will present a talk entitled "From learner-centred to learning-centred analytics: reframing the learning analytics paradigm".
- To register: please email learninganalytics@uq.edu.au
Learning analytics promises much. New modes and scale of data, combined with recent advancements in complex statistical methods, have afforded the sector new ways of understanding teaching and learning activities. Learning analytics approaches have been applied to research across multiple learning-related fields including student retention and academic achievement, learning design, self-regulation of learning, student well-being, and learning emotions. Lured by the promise of learning analytics, institutions are investing heavily in the technological and analytic tools needed to support its use, believing this will transform learning experiences for their students.
However, and in spite of the investment and profile afforded to learning analytics, there is concern within the sector that learning analytics approaches are not delivering the expected impact on learning, teaching, and student experience that many expected.
So why is this?
This presentation will suggest that part explanation for this phenomena lies in how learning analytics are structured within universities, the framings of learning and learning analytics that are applied when learning analytics are designed or performed, and the value proposition that these structures afford end users. It will heed calls from within the learning analytics sector for a performance of learning analytics that is theoretically and empirically grounded, and offer possible visions of how such a learning analytics could look. This will involve a subtle repositioning of learning analytics from a vehicle aimed at eliciting the ‘how much’ of learning to one focused on interrogating the ‘how’, and an epistemological reframing from learner-centred to learning-centred learning analytics.
About the presenter: Dr Cassandra Colvin
Since 2013, Cassandra has worked in learning analytics, management and research roles, this work requiring her to consider daily questions relating to learning and teaching, their practice and performance across the institution, and mechanisms and means available to reveal their essence, and impact. Her journey to that space was unorthodox. Her initial training and career was in classical music and for ten years she worked as a classical musician and music teacher. She also enjoyed an extensive career in international education, oversaw student support strategy at two institutions, and completed a PhD in Education that explored intercultural interactions on a university campus.
Cassandra has developed a national and international reputation for her work in learning analytics. She is a regular reviewer for learning analytics’ journals and the field’s peak international learning analytics conference, Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK). She also has assumed leadership roles in peak bodies including the Learning Analytics Special Interest Group for ASCILITE, and the Australian Learning Analytics Summer Institute (ALASI).
Cassandra was lead researcher and first author for a commissioned report for the Office for Learning Analytics that investigated learning analytics take up across the Australian higher education sector1. The project focused on understanding structural, contextual, and leadership affordances of learning analytics uptakes across institution. More recent research has focused on complexity leadership, and its affordances for learning analytics implementations, as well as papers exploring ontological and epistemological framings of learning, learning measurement, and learning analytics.
1 Colvin, C., Rogers, T., Wade, A., Dawson, S., Gasevic, D., Buckingham Shum, S., Nelson, K., Alexander, S., Lockyer, L., Kennedy, G., Corrin, L., & Fisher, J. (2016). Student retention and learning analytics: a snapshot of Australian practices and a framework for advancement. Canberra, ACT: Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching
About Learning Analytics and Digital Learning Community of Practice
All UQ staff are invited to attend these sessions aiming to develop a community of practice around learning analytics, evidence-based teaching practice and digital learning.
Each session intends to cater to a variety of presentation and participation formats including presentions, lightning talks, practical data processing tutorials, predictive model building tutorials, learning tool design sessions, recent publication/conference overviews, as well as panel discussions and debates.
For general enquiries please contact learninganalytics@uq.edu.au.