Stakeholders’ insights on learning analytics: Perspectives of students and staff

Learning analytics has drawn the attention of academics and administrators in recent years as a tool to better understand students' needs and to tailor appropriate and timely responses. While many value the potential of learning analytics, it is not without critics, especially with regards to ethical concerns surrounding the level and type of data gathered, and scepticism on data's ability to measure something useful and actionable. This paper gathers the thoughts of key stakeholders, including staff and students, and their expectations of learning analytics, their priorities for using student data, and how they should be supported to act on the data, with the aim of aiding institutions with their plans to implement learning analytics. For this analysis we explored stakeholder awareness, concerns, priorities and support needs with respect to effectively accessing, interpreting and utilising learning data through the use of surveys and focus groups. These were adapted from the previously published SHEILA framework protocols with additional topics added relating to awareness, uses of data, and support. The focus groups were used to capture prevalent themes, followed by surveys to gain perspectives on these themes from a wider stakeholder audience. Overall, results suggest there are significant differences in the perspectives of each of the stakeholders. There is also a strong need for both additional training and ongoing support to manage and realise stakeholder understanding and goals around learning analytics. Further research is necessary to explore the needs of a greater diversity of stakeholders.