Conflicting Values: An Exploration of the Tensions between Learning Analytics and Academic Librarianship

Abstract

The prevailing rhetoric concerning learning analytics is that its use will support the educational endeavor and make significant improvements to teaching and learning. For academic libraries, learning analytics presents the possibility of using library data to coordinate, integrate, and align with the goals of the institutions in which they are embedded. While libraries have a long history of collecting data to support various service and learning objectives, those data have typically been siloed, de-identified, private, and confidential. Although there are positive contributions that learning analytics can make to the learning process, there are concerns associated with its use, particularly the tensions between the objectives of learning analytics contrasted with different conceptualizations of learners and the values of education and librarianship. Institutions of higher education use learning analytics to achieve institutionally defined goals and outcomes for students, which creates tensions with the enshrined values of the American Library Association's Code of Ethics, Library Bill of Rights, and Core Competencies of Librarianship. The transcendent benefits to society that are inherent in education and academic librarianship, such as the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, are not measurable through learning analytics.

Who’s Reading Who? Exploring the State of Third-Party Tracking Technology in Open Access Journal Content

“…A theme found in library privacy literature is the need to balance innovation of services with professional ethics. This is true of library efforts to participate in campus learning analytics initiatives, where the possibility to measure library impact on student success and secure funding must be weighed against preserving patron privacy (Hartman-Caverly 2019; Hwang and Hanson 2021;Jones 2019;Jones et al 2020;Oakleaf 2016;2018;Oliphant and Brundin 2019;Selwyn 2019;Slade and Tait 2019;Travis and Ramirez 2020). However, there is evidence that, like the academy, many libraries are ill-prepared for this task.…”

Exploration of LIS professionals efforts in Pakistan towards the improvements of technological competencies in 21st century

“…The index covers a broad range of library services and activities. This may be tailored to the broad surroundings of a library to meet the unique requirements of the environment at both the management and entry-level levels (Oliphant and Brundin, 2019).…”

“…Other qualities recognized include leadership and facilitation, adaptation, assessment, collaboration, participation, communication, diversity and inclusion, preservation and curation, equality and creativity and vision (Hancock et al , 2019). All of these abilities are linked to attitudes, knowledge and skills that must be used in an illustrative rather than a comprehensive way to demonstrate their relevance (Oliphant and Brundin, 2019).…”

“…Functional competences are those that are essential for a federal librarian to accomplish his or her job duties. The term “occupational functional skills” refers to a group of related or equivalent abilities that indicate the core functional tasks associated with the occupation (Oliphant and Brundin, 2019). On the other side, foundational competencies are the universal or basic talents that are shared across several functional domains and career phases (Hancock et al , 2019).…”

Do They Even Care? Measuring Instructor Value of Student Privacy in the Context of Learning Analytics

“…The learning analytics literature puts privacy in conflict with other values, such as institutional efficiency and student learning [52], but research is needed to understand the relative value of privacy from the faculty perspective to compare faculty values with those of other stakeholders, such as administrators, students, and instructional designers. In combination with other literature suggesting that students do care about their privacy, the findings herein indicate that faculty care about students' privacy as well.…”