How can learning analytics help students?
Data can give learners agency and show teachers which students need support
Alyssa Wise is Professor of Technology and Education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University and Director of LIVE, Vanderbilt’s Learning Innovation Incubator. Alyssa explains that learning analytics can be used to create environments and supports for students to help them learn better.
“Data can be used to start to offer different opportunities.”
Alyssa Wise
Find out more on BOLD
When students are learning, some freedom to make their own decisions – agency – can help them feel in control and enjoy the learning process. If designed well, EdTech can give learners the right balance of choice and optimization.
Teacher dashboards can provide real-time information about how students are performing, empowering them to teach more effectively and provide more useful feedback to students.
The goal of learning analytics is to create an environment and responsive supports that help students learn better.
If you look at pictures of many classrooms today, it’s not so different from 100 years ago, where you have one teacher in the front of the room talking to 100 students and saying exactly the same thing. The idea that data can be used to start to offer different opportunities and experiences to different students is already an improvement.
So teachers could support students in reflecting and making changes, which is very powerful because it gives the students agency and the chance to be in control of their learning.
You can also think of a different world in which teachers are starting to get different analytics about what’s going on in their class as a whole. That can help them decide where to focus their limited time and resources to support the students who need it most.
Footnotes
Alyssa Wise is Professor of Technology and Education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University and Director of LIVE, Vanderbilt’s Learning Innovation Incubator.
Interviewee:
