This week’s Tweetorial highlighted areas of Learning Analytics (LA) that I was interested in investigating further – in particular ethics and student intervention.
Until recently I had a vague awareness of a JISC funded project aimed at developing a Learning Analytics service for UK Colleges and Universities (Jisc, 2015). I decided to delve into the project’s Code of Practice to gain a clearer understanding of how the education sector currently addresses some of the issues that we have been discussing this week.
During the Tweetorial, James Lamb asked the #mscedc group:
I responded by tweeting:
Therefore, I was relieved to read that JISC acknowledge that “Institutions recognise that analytics can never give a complete picture of an individual’s learning and may sometimes ignore personal circumstances”.
What I also found to be of high interest when reviewing the Code of Practice was guidelines relating to student access to analytical data. JISC stress “If an institution considers that the analytics may have a harmful impact on the student’s academic progress or wellbeing it may withhold the analytics from the student, subject to clearly defined and explained policies.”
I found this fascinating as we have been considering the potential consequences for students based on the comparison between analytical output and an institution’s performance benchmarks. What I hadn’t considered is how a student’s performance may be affected by viewing their own analytical data.
References
JISC. (2015). Code of practice for learning analytics. Retrieved: 18 March 2017. https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/jd0040_code_of_practice_for_learning_analytics_190515_v1.pdf