Whilst everyone has heard at least once the term generative AI, not many people might know what learning analytics is.

Learning analytics is commonly defined as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs”.

Optimising learning as a goal came into vogue during the 1990s, when online learning took off, allowing learners and educators to collaborate and learn together on new platforms.

Since then, data analysis has been used to improve the learning environment experience and to create concrete improvements to ensure that all learners thrive and acquire knowledge in the best way possible.

As Professor Olga Viberg states in the article “The current landscape of learning analytics in higher education”, learning analytics serves therefore to “identify patterns of participation, communication, and contribution”. Professor Juan Pedro Cerro Martinez adds in his study “Impact of using learning analytics in asynchronous online discussions in higher education” that “such analysis might allow teachers and students to understand individual participation as well as the group’s collaborative process, supporting decision-making and, hence, quality collaboration”.

In this sense, decision-making becomes data-driven as it is supported by it directly. Learning can hence become an experiential predictive process, where students feel empowered and supported by personalised and adapted methods tailored to certain groups of people or individuals that might require thorough help, such as learners with learning disabilities.

Data-driven strategies can be accompanied in the classroom by visual learning dashboards, which provide an overview of learning data through data visualisation tools and allow educators to have a quantitative research basis to start from when customising their educational programmes.

Also in the Digital First project, educators and learners follow this approach. To integrate innovative ways of teaching informatics in the classroom, the project combines learning analytics with dialogue clubs to maximise engagement and promote the co-creation of new pedagogical methodologies by involving digital native learners.

Are you willing to discover more about this synergy and be part of the learning analytics crew?

Follow the project here for more news and updates: https://digitalfirstnetwork.eu/