The great part of learning analytics research addresses questions of how to determine meaningful data traces and present them in a form that can be useful to educational decision makers. But even the best-constructed algorithms, visualizations and dashboards will not make a meaningful impact on education if they are not integrated into the core activities of teaching and learning they are intended to support. Working within the scope of the university course, I present several different ways in which learning analytics tools and classroom pedagogy can be integrated--examining both how implementing learning analytics requires corresponding adjustments in learning design, and anticipating pedagogical needs that learning analytics system design can take into account. Particular attention will be paid to issues of student agency, reference frames for data interpretation, and learning analytics as a mediator of educational discourse. To ground the discussion, work from the E-Listening Project at Simon Fraser University will be presented as an initial example of a learning analytics application developed and implemented in a university course using such an integrated approach.
Alyssa Wise is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology and Research Design at Simon Fraser University.