Being more human: rooting learning analytics throughresistance andreconnection with the values of higher education

Abstract

Universities are now compelled to attend to metrics that (re)shape our conceptualisation of the student experience. New technologies such as learning analytics (LA) promise the ability to target personalised support to profiled 'at risk' students through mapping large-scale historic student engagement data such as attendance, library use, and virtual learning environment activity as well as demographic information and typical student outcomes. Yet serious ethical and implementation issues remain. Data-driven labelling of students as 'high risk', 'hard to reach' or 'vulnerable' creates conflict between promoting personal growth and human flourishing and treating people merely as data points. This article argues that universities must resist the assumption that numbers and algorithms alone can solve the 'problem' of student retention and performance; rather, LA work must be underpinned by a reconnection with the agreed values relating to the purpose of higher education, including democratic engagement, recognition of diverse and individual experience, and processes of becoming. Such a reconnection, this article contends, is possible when LA work is designed and implemented in genuine collaboration and partnership with students. ArticleWe live in uncertain, unpredictable and super complex times, which, as Ron Barnett writes, produce a 'fragility in the way that we understand the world ' (2000, p. 257). Indeed, if the world and the society contained within it are part of an open, indeterminate, 'messy' (Law, 2004), and thus unpredictable but self-organising system (Prigigone & Sten-gers, 1984), how might our universities resist the lure of developments in technology, such as learning analytics (LA), that seek to 'tidy up' this messiness but, at the same time, risk diminishing the underpinning values of higher education? This article argues that the popularity of LA as a solution to the 'problem' of student retention, experience and performance (Olmos & Corrin, 2012) fails to attend to the complexities of collective and individual existence. Shaped by historical drivers for the massification and marketisa-tion of HE as well as the current, fundamental tenants of neo-liberalism that position English universities as 'schizophrenic transnational business corporations' (Shore, 2010, p. 15), universities routinely fail to account for students' 'continual change[s] of form' (Bergson, 1911, p. 301) and the 'processes of becoming that are fostered in a culture of affirmation that acts through either empowering or confining powers' (Braidotti, 2012, p. 173). Students who transition through university thus emerge in and through educational processes in unique and unpredictable ways (Biesta, 2010;Postma, 2016).What is needed in Higher Education (HE) is an 'alternative work model' (Freire, 2007, p. 4) that recognises our complicity in the neo-liberal world. Here, we reject both the concept of student as consumer or product of HE, as well as the liberal tradition of students as apprentice academics in search of knowledge for its ...

Perspectives from the stakeholder: Students’ views regarding learning analytics and data collection

“…Dollinger and Lodge (2018) also emphasised this point in their paper about issues and barriers and the use of co-creation strategies to address them. Parkes et al (2020) also highlighted the importance of involving students from the outset (collecting and sharing data together) so that education becomes a democratic process. Our study adds to the work of those indicated here by further determining student understanding and concerns regarding LA so these views may be taken on board by institutions, thus allowing LA outcomes to meaningfully inform both policy and practice (for all stakeholders).…”

Application Analysis of Multi-Intelligence Optimization Decision-Making Method in College Students’ Ideological and Political Education System

“…Sabuncuoglu and Halayqeh [24] investigated EFL learners' views on learner autonomy and the extent to which their views on their responsibilities, abilities, motivation, and their activities and behaviors in and out of the classroom are actually applied. Parkes et al [25] state that universities must resist the assumption that the "problem" of student retention rate and performance can be solved only by numbers and algorithms; rather, the work in Los Angeles must be based on a reconnection with agreed values related to the purposes of higher education, including democratic participation, recognition of diversity and personal experience, and the process of becoming.…”

Diverse definitions of engagement: Personalised learning analytics to support staff and students

“…Predictive analytics have also been challenged about their reliance on standardised variables or indicators, with an emphasis that instructional contexts are critical to consider when using learning analytics, and that generic one-size-fits-all models of student success are overly crude and ineffective (Gasevic et al, 2016). Moreover, there have been impassioned calls to rediscover the humanity in learning and teaching through data, and reconnect teachers with students at a human level through an ethic of care (Parkes et al, 2020):…”