Keynote given on 7 June 2023 by Rebecca Ferguson of The Open University in the UK at the Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) organised by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) in Singapore.

1. What can we achieve
together?
Rebecca Ferguson
Learning Analytics Summer Institute,
Singapore
Wednesday 7 June 2023

2. What are we trying to achieve?

3. 3
The measurement,
collection, analysis and
reporting of data about
learners and their
contexts, for purposes of
understanding and
optimizing learning and
the environments in which
it occurs.
Learning analytics

4. How are we doing?

5. 5
…while we’ve carved a fantastic
research domain for a large
number of academics and a growing
number of researchers globally,
we have done less well at
tackling improvement of the
quality of learners’ lives by
making the learning experience
something that is less
institutional, less course based,
less focused on our system of
education, and more focused on
the experience of learners.
Are we optimising learning?
Where is learning
analytics going?
Examining the values,
practices and
perceptions of the
field
LAK22 panel with
Roger Azevedo,
George Siemens,
Rebecca Ferguson and
host Xavier Ochoa

6. 6
What are we telling educators about?
If you could have
any superpowers
you wanted, to
help you do your
job, what would
they be?
Ferguson, R., Ochoa, X. and Kovanović, V., 2022.
Learning Analytics: Practitioners, Take Note. Journal of
Learning Analytics, 9(3), pp.1-7.
434 notes for practice from 130 JLA papers
97 notes for practice are aimed at educators
• 12 on adoption of learning analytics
• 11 on students at risk
• 7 on assessment
• 7 on confusion
• 6 on videos
• 5 on the design of learning analytics
• 4 on learning design
• 4 on mindset
• 3 on collaborative learnin
• 3 on discourse
• 3 on diversity
• 3 on feedback / scaffoldin
• 3 on retention

7. 7
Human-centred
analytics
If you could have
any superpowers
you wanted, to
help you do your
job, what would
they be?
Ferguson, R., Ochoa, X. and Kovanović, V., 2022.
Learning Analytics: Practitioners, Take Note. Journal of
Learning Analytics, 9(3), pp.1-7.

8. Open peer commentary

9. 9
Lacking direction?
…37.4% of articles do not analyze
data from learners in an education
system, 71.1% do not include any
measure of learning outcomes, and
89% do not attempt to intervene in
the learning environment. We
contrast these findings with the
stated definition of LA and infer,
like others before us, that LA
scholarship presently lacks clear
direction toward its stated goals.
We invite critical discussion of
these findings.

10. 10
Responses in press (almost – see JLA 10:2, out in August)
We need to:
• make space for research and
conversation about students’
curricular experiences and
trajectories.

11. 11
Responses in press (almost – see JLA 10:2, out in August)
We need to:
• Revise our definition to include
the promotion of social justice –
taking into account justice,
equity, diversity and inclusion.

12. 12
Responses in press (almost – see JLA 10:2, out in August)
We need to:
• present information to support
sense-making and decision making.

13. 13
Responses in press (almost – see JLA 10:2, out in August)
We need to:
• provide insights into learning
processes in the real world.

14. 14
Responses in press (almost – see JLA 10:2, out in August)
We need to:
• discover models that are
increasingly informative about
the structures present in
educational contexts.

15. Ongoing challenges

16. 16
A challenge from the start:
focus on the perspectives of learners
Ferguson, R.,
2012. Learning
analytics:
drivers,
developments and
challenges.
International
Journal of
Technology
Enhanced
Learning, 4(5-6),
pp.304-317.
A focus on the perspectives of learners will be essential
to the development of analytics related to their needs,
rather than to the needs of institutions. Such a
perspective has the potential to extend criteria for
learning success beyond grades and persistence to
include motivation, confidence, enjoyment, satisfaction
and meeting career goals. It could also realign work on
grading and marking, moving it away from summative
assessment that looks back at what learners have
achieved, towards formative assessment that helps
them to develop.

17. 17
A challenge from the start:
build strong connections with the
learning sciences Ferguson, R.,
2012. Learning
analytics:
drivers,
developments
and challenges.
International
Journal of
Technology
Enhanced
Learning, 4(5-
6), pp.304-317.
Understanding and optimising learning
requires a good understanding of how
learning takes place, how it can be
supported, and the importance of factors
such as identity, reputation and affect.
[…]
This has the potential to be a two-way
process, with learning analytics helping
to form the basis for good learning
design, effective pedagogy and increasing
student self-awareness.

18. Easy ways into pedagogy

19. 19
Innovating pedagogy
www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/

20. 20
Pedagodzilla

21. How can the learning sciences help us?
Interventions that shift learning outcomes

22. 22
Self regulation
Zimmerman, B. J., &
Moylan, A. R.
(2009). Self-
regulation: where
metacognition and
motivation
intersect. In D. J.
Hacker, J. Dunlosky
& A. C. Graesser
(Eds), Handbook of
Metacognition in
Education (pp. 299-
315). Routledge.

23. 23
OnTask: self-regulation and success
• A learning analytics-based system was
used to deliver process feedback to
students in a course.
• The learning-analytics feedback
employed multimodal data, such as log
data from the learning management
system and e-book.
• The pattern of self-regulated
learning differed between students
who had received the feedback, and
those who had not.
• Final course marks were significantly
higher for students who had received
the feedback, compared to those who
had not.
Lim, L.A., Gentili, S., Pardo, A.,
Kovanović, V., Whitelock-Wainwright,
A., Gašević, D. and Dawson, S., 2021.
What changes, and for whom? Learning
and Instruction, 72.

24. 24
Reflection
When used effectively, reflective
writing tasks can deepen learners’
understanding of key concepts, help
them critically appraise their
developing professional identity, and
build qualities for lifelong
learning. As such, reflecting writing
is attracting substantial interest
from universities concerned with
experiential learning, reflective
practice, and developing a holistic
conception of the learner.
Buckingham Shum, S.,
Sándor, A., Goldsmith,
R., Wang, X., Bass, R., &
McWilliams, M.
(2016). Reflecting on
reflective writing
analytics: Assessment
challenges and iterative
evaluation of a prototype
tool. LAK16, Edinburgh,
UK, ACM.

25. 25
AcaWriter: supporting student reflection
Benefits: ‘ease of use to prompt reflection, tangible
tool with non-judgmental capacity; benefits for
enhancing self and peer reflection on research
techniques and group dynamics; benefits of the
reflective writing process to enhance research capacity
compared with engaging in reflective dialogue; and
benefits beyond the writing process: cultivating self-
improvement and self-confidence’
Lucas, C., Buckingham
Shum, S., Liu, M. and
Bebawy, M., 2021.
Implementing a Novel
Software Program to
Support Pharmacy
Students’ Reflective
Practice in Scientific
Research. American
Journal of
Pharmaceutical
Education, 85(10).

26. 26
Writing analytics: higher order thinking skills
• ‘development of learner
metacognition using reflective
writing analytics (Gibson et al.,
2017),
• a revision assistant for
argumentative writing (Zhang, Hwa,
Litman, & Hashemi, 2016),
• knowledge transformation in
argumentative writing; (Raković,
Marzouk, & Chang, 2021)
• and self-regulated learning (Winne,
2001; Wollny, Schneider, Rittberger,
& Drachsler).’
Shibani, A., Gibson, A., Knight,
S., Winne, P.H. and Litman, D.,
2022. Writing Analytics for higher-
order thinking skills. Companion
Proceedings of LAK22, p.165.
(Diagram from Zhang et al. 2016)

27. 27
Challenges for online educators Moore, M. G. (1993)
‘Theory of
transactional
distance’, in
Keegan, D. (ed),
Theoretical
Principles of
Distance Education,
London and New
York, Routledge,
pp. 22–38.
“…transactional distance is the gap
between the understanding of a teacher (or
teaching team) and that of a learner, and
distance education is the methodology of
structuring courses and managing dialogue
between teacher and learner to bridge that
gap through communications technology
[...] Although traditionally every teacher
constructs all the lesson’s components,
each component might be the work of a
specialist, and the lesson is the product
of the team. ”
Moore, M. G.
(2019). The Theory
of Transactional
Distance. Handbook
of Distance
Education. M. G.
Moore and W. C.
Diehl. New York,
Routledge: 32-46.

28. 28
OpenAnalyse: empowering educators
‘Teachers who made “average”
use of OUA […] and intervened
with students flagged as at risk
were found to benefit their
students the most; after controlling
for differences in academic
performance, these students were
found to have significantly better
performance than their peers in
the previous year’s course
presentation during which the
same teachers made no use of
predictive learning analytics.’ Herodotou, C., Hlosta, M., Boroowa, A., Rienties,
B., Zdrahal, Z. and Mangafa, C., 2019. Empowering
online teachers through predictive learning
analytics. JET, 50(6), pp.3064-3079.

29. Addressing the challenges

30. EP4LA workshops
LACE provocations
JLA special issue 3:1 2016
Neil Selwyn keynote LAK 2019
JLA special issue
6:3 2019
Ongoing work 2023
DEVELOPING THE
SIX CHALLENGES

31. 31
Challenge one: duty to act
Use data and analytics whenever
they can contribute to learner
success, ensuring that the
analytics take into account all
that is known about learning
and teaching.
Ferguson, R. (2019). "Ethical
Challenges for Learning Analytics "
Journal of Learning Analytics 6(3):
25-30.

32. 32
Challenge two: informed consent
Equip learners and
educators with data
literacy skills, so
they are sufficiently
informed to give or
withhold consent to
the use of data and
analytics.
Data literacy skills include the ability
to read, work with, analyse, and argue with dat

33. 33
Challenge three: safeguarding
Take a proactive approach
to safeguarding in an
increasingly data-driven
society, identifying
potential risks, and
taking action to limit
them.
21 February, 2020: “There have
been over 1.3 million threat
alerts at the OU so far in
2020”
(Inside Track – internal
newsletter)

34. 34
Challenge four: equality and justice
Work towards
increased
equality and
justice,
expanding
awareness of ways
in which
analytics have
the potential to
increase or
decrease these.
Facebook screenshot by Lauren F Klein • slide from Jutta Treviranus, CC BY-NC 4.0

35. 35
Challenge five: data ownership
Increase
understanding of
the value,
ownership, and
control of data.
https://www.rsikoryak.com/masterpiece-comics-1

36. 36
Challenge six: integrity of self

37. 37
Challenge six: integrity of self

38. 38
Putting it all together
• Make space for learners
• Work towards social justice
• Support sense-making and
decision-making
• Provide insights into learning
processes
• Model the structures in
educational contexts
• Pay attention to pedagogy
• Address the challenges
• Learn from other fields
• Build on the work of others
• Learn from each other

39. @R3beccaf
Rebecca.ferguson@open.ac.uk
Slideshare.net/R3beccaF