Big Data And Learning Analytics In Higher Education

​This book focuses on the uses of big data in the context of higher education. The book describes a wide range of administrative and operational data gathering processes aimed at assessing institutional performance and progress in order to predict future performance, and identifies potential issues related to academic programming, research, teaching and learning​. Big data refers to data which is fundamentally too big and complex and moves too fast for the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The value of big data is the ability to identify useful data and turn it into useable information by identifying patterns and deviations from patterns​.

Learning Analytics in Higher Education provides a foundational understanding of how learning analytics is defined, what barriers and opportunities exist, and how it can be used to improve practice, including strategic planning, course development, teaching pedagogy, and student assessment. Well-known contributors provide empirical, theoretical, and practical perspectives on the current use and future potential of learning analytics for student learning and data-driven decision-making, ways to effectively evaluate and research learning analytics, integration of learning analytics into practice, organizational barriers and opportunities for harnessing Big Data to create and support use of these tools, and ethical considerations related to privacy and consent. Designed to give readers a practical and theoretical foundation in learning analytics and how data can support student success in higher education, this book is a valuable resource for scholars and administrators.

​This book focuses on the uses of big data in the context of higher education. The book describes a wide range of administrative and operational data gathering processes aimed at assessing institutional performance and progress in order to predict future performance, and identifies potential issues related to academic programming, research, teaching and learning​. Big data refers to data which is fundamentally too big and complex and moves too fast for the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The value of big data is the ability to identify useful data and turn it into useable information by identifying patterns and deviations from patterns​.

Webber, Henry Y. Zheng, Ying Zhou

The term learning analytics is used in the context of the use of analytics in e-learning environments. Learning analytics is used to improve quality. It uses data about students and their activities to provide better understanding and to improve student learning. The use of learning management systems, where the activity of the students can be easily accessed, potentiated the use of learning analytics to understand their route during the learning process, help students be aware of their progress, and detect situations where students can give up the course before its completion, which is a growing problem in e-learning environments. Advancing the Power of Learning Analytics and Big Data in Education provides insights concerning the use of learning analytics, the role and impact of analytics on education, and how learning analytics are designed, employed, and assessed. The chapters will discuss factors affecting learning analytics such as human factors, geographical factors, technological factors, and ethical and legal factors. This book is ideal for teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the use of big data and learning analytics for improved student success and educational environments.

The book aims to advance global knowledge and practice in applying data science to transform higher education learning and teaching to improve personalization, access and effectiveness of education for all. Currently, higher education institutions and involved stakeholders can derive multiple benefits from educational data mining and learning analytics by using different data analytics strategies to produce summative, real-time, and predictive or prescriptive insights and recommendations. Educational data mining refers to the process of extracting useful information out of a large collection of complex educational datasets while learning analytics emphasizes insights and responses to real-time learning processes based on educational information from digital learning environments, administrative systems, and social platforms. This volume provides insight into the emerging paradigms, frameworks, methods and processes of managing change to better facilitate organizational transformation toward implementation of educational data mining and learning analytics. It features current research exploring the (a) theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the adoption of learning analytics, (b) technological infrastructure and staff capabilities required, as well as (c) case studies that describe current practices and experiences in the use of data analytics in higher education.

Learning analytics (or educational big data) tools are increasingly being deployed on campuses to improve student performance, retention and completion, especially when those metrics are tied to funding. Providing personalized, real-time, actionable feedback through mining and analysis of large data sets, learning analytics can illuminate trends and predict future outcomes. While promising, there is limited and mixed empirical evidence related to its efficacy to improve student retention and completion. Further, learning analytics tools are used by a variety of people on campus, and as such, its use in practice may not align with institutional intent. This monograph delves into the research, literature, and issues associated with learning analytics implementation, adoption, and use by individuals within higher education institutions. With it, readers will gain a greater understanding of the potential and challenges related to implementing, adopting, and integrating these systems on their campuses and within their classrooms and advising sessions. This is the fifth issue of the 43rd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Learning analytics is one of the most important research issues in the field of educational technology. By analyzing logs and records in educational databases and systems, it can provide useful information to teachers, learners, and decision makers – information which they can use to improve teaching strategies, learning performances, and educational policies. However, it is a great challenge for most researchers to efficiently analyze educational data in a meaningful way. This book presents various learning analytics approaches and applications, including the process of determining the coding scheme, analyzing the collected data, and interpreting the findings. This book was originally published as a special issue of Interactive Learning Environments.