Group Admins
Description
This aligns with conference themes around Empowerment in Learning Technology: supporting students through staff/student partnerships, students as influencers, developing skills and supporting staff at all levels and learning analytics.
UK HEIs are increasingly looking to Learning Analytics to provide statistical information about student learning behaviours in order to improve the student learning experience. Student ‘time-on-task’ in engaging with academic tasks contributes to learning and achievement (Chickering and Gamson 1987; Arum and Roksa 2011) however, the 2015 Student Academic Experience Survey showed that:
“Students also recognise that their own engagement is crucial to their academic success: as last year, the number one reason given by students as to why their experience has not lived up to their expectations is that they have not put in enough effort themselves.” Which indicates that students are recognising the need for deeper engagement.
Applying learning analytics in teaching contexts, shifting responsibility and agency to students will enable personal action plans to be a catalyst for more effective student learning. We are undertaking a project which takes a non-systems approach by focusing on the pedagogic impact of rich data on teachers’ practice and students’ learning. As such, we believe the project has the potential to have a significant impact on student achievement and retention.
The proposed outcome will be a series of innovative pedagogic strategies for using analytics, leading to (a) more time-on-task for students, (b) a deeper learning experience; (c) strengthening student agency. It will aim to provide evidence of learning benefits on seven courses, with the potential to scale-up throughout our institution. We expect particular benefits for at-risk students. UK HEI statistics show attainment gaps for: i) students from lower socio-economic groups (HEFCE 2013, 2014) even after controlling other factors such as type of institution. ii) BME students (Richardson 2008); iii) white male students; iv) Students with disabilities and specific learning difficulties (SpLDs), typically two to four percentage points less likely to be awarded a first or 2:1 (HEFCE 2016).
In addition to reporting on the project and its progress to date, the presentation will explain how the students designed the Learner Dashboard before collaborating with academics to develop pedagogic strategies to make use of learning analytics, provide a unique student perspective and share the student feedback from these sessions with the audience.
REFERENCES
Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F., 1987. Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE bulletin, 3, p.7.
Arum, R. and Roksa, J., 2011. Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. University of Chicago Press.
Richardson, J.T., 2008. The attainment of ethnic minority students in UK higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 33(1), pp.33-48.
HEFCE 2013, 2014, 2016 http://www.hefce.ac.uk/
