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Part 1: The added value for education

Over the past four years, we have investigated what Learning Analytics (LA) can mean for education in Utrecht. Various projects have been launched, evaluated, and discussed. Now we look back on the evaluation of those projects. Where can LA have the greatest impact?  

Overview of the areas of interest

Let's go back to basics: what do we want to use LA for?

At the start of the LA program, we invested in the basics: a vision, clear frameworks, and the right preconditions (see part 2 of this blog). The vision document sets out what Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ (UU) wants to use LA for, but also how we will do so carefully, with an eye for didactics, ethics, and privacy.  Students, lecturers, and privacy officers contributed to the content of the vision document, and the Executive Board approved the vision.

The vision outlines the areas of focus we have concentrated on over the past four years:
•    Area 1: LA within and during the duration of courses
•    Area 2: LA for course evaluation
•    Area 3: LA to provide insight into student competencies
•    Area 4: LA to predict study success

Several projects have been launched and evaluated in each of these areas. But which ones really deliver added value, also taking into account current developments in education and technology? We have two recommendations.
 

Impact area 1: LA for activating and personalized education

Everything starts with insight. 

The recently updated UU Education Model emphasizes the importance of activating education and a system in which teachers and other stakeholders invest in quality and reflection. The continuous development of teachers themselves is also central. To make this possible, it is crucial from both the perspective of teachers and students that there is insight into how students learn and where they may get stuck. LA can provide these insights so that appropriate action can be taken. This can involve LA that informs teachers or other supervisors, as well as LA that focuses on the student themselves. This allows teachers to make adjustments during a course to respond to students' curiosity, as in our pilot with the teacher dashboard. 

Of course, courses and teachers differ in the extent to which the design of the education can still be adjusted at the last minute. But LA can also be offered after a course has ended in order to make (major) adjustments to a course in the next cohort. We also saw this in the DACE project. Research by O&T already showed in its advisory report that teachers, among others, need a central place to monitor the quality of their teaching. A dashboard such as DACE adds a valuable source of information (in addition to student perceptions, it also includes student activity) and provides a place to store all relevant documentation. Future applications could, for example, also analyze and summarize the answers to open questions in course evaluations for teachers. 
 

Impact area 2: Student development throughout their academic career

Development in terms of content and personal growth.

It is not only knowledge and skills that count; personal development is also receiving (once again) increasing attention. Questions such as "who am I as a student," "what is my role in the (academic) community," and "what skills do I want to develop" are central to this. Providing students with learning disabilities with insight into where they stand and where they are developing can play a major role in this. This could include insight at a cross-course level, where students gain insight into their development across courses, also focused on personal development by regularly incorporating reflection questions. 

In the F-ACT project, for example, students receive an overview of their writing skills with tips on which resources can help them develop their skills even further. LA during courses can also help with this: LA can show a student what specific learning objectives there are for that course and which ones have already been achieved. This is not only an active task for the student themselves, but also for the guidance chain. From a privacy and ethical point of view, students could choose for themselves whether to take this information about themselves to a tutorial, for example, so that the use of LA is also responsible from an ethical and privacy perspective.

Students at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ already have access to these kinds of resources. For example, an overview of their writing skills in the F-ACT project, an assessment of their study skills with Thermos, and an overview of their education and schedule in . As a tutor, I see that students sometimes get lost because all systems have their own portal. How great would it be if we could link these systems into one overview? 
 

In conclusion

The primary process—the teacher and the student—can be supported by LA. Insight is everything! 

To make these substantive projects possible – and to continue to do so in the future – it is, of course, necessary that the necessary preconditions are properly in place. In the accompanying blog post (Looking back: part 2), we share our lessons learned when it comes to issues such as policy, organization, infrastructure, and data maturity. Although we now have a solid foundation, it is essential to continue investing in and developing this. 

We remain committed to facilitating the high-quality education that UU stands for.