How Can Teachers Benefit Out of Learning Analytics?

At a time when technology is revolutionizing education, what draws one’s attention immediately are students and how their experience is changing with the changing education environment.

But we seldom do focus on another equally important group whose main focus is always to think about such issues not occasionally but every day. Yes, we are talking about the teachers without whose support talking of education reform remains just so fragmentary.

Data analytics is to a large extent propelling the steps in pedagogy reforms. It is making teachers more empowered in the way they make learning effective for students. Teachers have been using data in many forms to inspect how students are learning and performing in terms of test scores to homework grades.

As per the Horizon Report, learning analytics is defined as “the interpretation of a wide range of data produced by and gathered on behalf of students in order to assess academic progress, predict future performance and spot potential issues. The goal of learning analytics is to enable teachers and schools to tailor educational opportunities to each student’s level of need and ability to close-to-real time.”

The four critical objectives which learning analytics successfully accomplishes in education are:

1.       To enable students to identify his or her achievements against other students.
2.       To help teachers offer timely support to students who are in need of special mentoring.
3.       To enhance the quality of education offered in the course by teachers and also raise the relevance of the developed materials.
4.       Allow training managers to decide on further actions adapted to newly arrived audiences and adapt curricula.

For students to change and get themselves adapt to a new way of learning, it is important to help teachers get ahead of that change. And with the right kind of learning analytical tool, teachers can surely have a strong grip over each student’s individual needs, capacities and interests. This is where learning analytics has proved itself to be a perfect tool for teachers as it gives them insight and context. It gives teachers a full control over meaningful information on students which plays a crucial role in shaping the progress level of students.

Benefits of Learning Analytics

1. If used properly, it helps in achieving a better students’ experience with students befitting from a more personalized learning experience. It also helps in improving students’ retention with timely support and guidance from teachers.
2. It helps institutions reduce the dropout levels to a large extent by essentially improving the success rates of students.
3. It helps teachers to produce well-rounded, inquisitive and thoughtful citizens. It essentially improves the level of teaching and helping it come out of the four walls of simple transmission of content. It scales up to a level where teaching is more about developing critical thinking, triggering collaborative interaction and creating a creative environment for students to nurture their skills and abilities to the best possible extent.

Data in many ways will be fuelling the modern education system and pedagogy in particular. There are tremendous immediate benefits of implementing learning analytics in education. From e-learning to higher education, the adoption of learning analytics is beneficial and has been found to offer instant help to educators. Right from quality assurance to intervention to identifying at-risk sub groups, implementation of learning analytics has turned up really fruitful for the institutions.

With steady reforms taking up already, the future of learning looks quite promising. So what role would learning analytics play in strengthening the future of learning? Hear on it in the video below, where Prof Simon Buckingham Shum presents the important facets on learning analytics and how it would shape future of learning.

So what are your thoughts on learning analytics and how it is molding steps in pedagogical reforms?