Designing for student-facing learning analytics

Abstract

Despite a narrative that sees learning analytics (LA) as a field that aims to enhance student learning, few student-facing solutions have emerged. This can make it difficult for educators to imagine how data can be used in the classroom, and in turn diminishes the promise of LA as an enabler for encouraging important skills such as sense-making, metacognition, and reflection. We propose two learning design patterns that will help educators to incorporate LA into their teaching protocols: do-analyse-change-reflect, and active learning squared. We discuss these patterns with reference to a case study utilising the Connected Learning Analytics (CLA) toolkit, in three trials run over a period of 18 months. The results demonstrate that student-facing learning analytics is not just a future possibility, but an area that is ripe for further development.