Team Spotlight: Learning Analytics

The Learning Enhancement and Innovation unit is comprised of several teams that work across different aspects of learning and teaching. Our teams work collaboratively within the unit to achieve the shared goal of ‘building better graduates’.

Each month, we will do a spotlight on an individual team to understand what roles they play within the Learning Enhancement Innovation unit in order to enhance the student learning experience at the University of Adelaide.

This month, we are looking at the Learning Analytics team.

Four things you should know about the Learning Analytics Team:

1. We work collaboratively with teaching staff to look for insights into approaches or activities associated with teaching and learning. This also includes but is not limited to painting a better picture of their students and their courses, by understanding engagement, demographics, at-risk students, and everything in between.
2. We integrate system agnostic learning & teaching data from numerous systems and processes, including (but not limited to): MyUni, Echo360, Peoplesoft, Cognos BI, Library, CRM and Zoom.
3. We don’t just provide data and leave you to figure it out. We work with colleagues to uncover valuable insights relevant to assist in answering specific questions and to develop actions and strategies that assist students achieve better academic outcomes.
4. We also like to focus our efforts towards identifying what works well and has positive impact.

Successful projects by Learning Analytics

• The Detailed Course Report is a downloadable, easily accessible report in each MyUni course. This report provides insights into student demographics, academic results and program & other course enrolments, as well as information about the course. It has been found useful at multiple stages of any teaching period. Find out more here.
• Student Insights is being piloted in ten first year courses again during Semester 1, 2020. This MyUni tool focuses on providing students with insights on the top learning resources viewed and top active participation areas within the online learning environment. It also provides information related to the individuals’ participation in these two insight areas. Find out more here.
• The Teaching & Learning Insights Dashboard (PowerBI) provides insights on student outcomes and activities within a course. The dashboard is fully filterable, providing insights into specific cohorts if desired. The dashboard includes outcomes by course & program, grade distributions, dropped enrolments, assessment pass rates, weekly engagement, and has previously been used to review and enhance HFR courses. Find out more here.
• Assessment Mapping dashboards are made available at the beginning of each semester to assist teaching staff to avoid assessment clashes across courses that their students are enrolled in. Find out more here.
• New Analytics provides data visualisations and insights on student engagement (page views and participation), as well as student grades across a course. The tool allows teaching staff to contextualise and filter to determine student cohorts. These student lists can be downloaded or can be used to personalise a message within the inbuilt messaging tool. Find out more here.

What we’re working on now

Our work is led by strategic initiatives and their alignment to what staff ask for and need. Working collaboratively with teaching and professional staff, we have a good view of how data and insights can inform and innovate practice. Innovation may be as simple as being able to see at a glance, data that shows which students are (or are not) engaging and quickly being able to make an informed decision. With the current Covid-19 remote learning limitations the following two initiatives will enhance the data and insights currently available.  Models for these two initiatives were developed in late 2019 and have since been socialised to ensure that they meet user expectations.

• The Engagement Dashboard aims to provide a current view of student engagement in comparison to historical engagement data in terms of:
  • % of students engaged daily and on average;
  • Average request counts per student daily and on average;
  • Engaged days;
  • Last login date;
  • Individual student online engagement by compounding the above four measures;
  • Different cohorts of students’ online engagement by demographics.

• Student Risk Dashboard will provide a current view of course enrolment, course engagement, course performance, assignment status and performance, and academic/engagement risk flags at the student level. Information presented at program, course and individual student level with ability to drill down between views. What we need is additional peer engagement to use the tools and resources that we’ve produced and those we are testing so that we can make them better and so that you can impact your students’ academic outcomes. It’s not just about the struggling students, we also want to make good students better!

Want to connect with the Learning Analytics Team?

Find out more here.