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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

A taxonomy of ethical, legal and logistical issues of learning analytics v1.0

Jisc, Apereo and the Lace Project held a workshop in Paris on 6th February to discuss the ethical and legal issues of learning analytics.  The focus of this meeting was the draft taxonomy of issues that I prepared previously.  It was extremely helpful to have comments from experts in the area to refine the list, which is forming […]

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Institutional Use Network

UK Learning Analytics Network – notes from kick-off meeting

Jisc’s Learning Analytics Network got off to a great start last week with a workshop hosted by the University of East London.  The event was fully subscribed, with around 50 people attending from 31 different institutions, showing the high level of interest in the area in the UK. Staff and students very positive about dashboards at Nottingham Trent Mike […]

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Architecture Ethics Open learning analytics Systems

Refining a systems architecture for learning analytics

European experts came together last week in an icy Paris to review Jisc’s evolving architecture for learning analytics.  The event at L’Université Paris Descartes was jointly hosted by Apereo and Jisc.  Delegates included representatives from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten in Germany, Surfnet in the Netherlands, CETIS and the Lace Project, as […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Institutional Use Legal Issues

A taxonomy of the ethical and legal issues of learning analytics v0.1

In discussions around the ethics and legal issues of learning analytics I’ve found the same issues cropping up again and again. Almost always they’ve already been covered somewhere in the growing collection of publications on learning analytics. Sometimes they’re expressed in different ways but boil down to the same underlying problem. The literature review of […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Legal Issues

Developing the Code of Practice

A wide-ranging discussion took place in London last week to discuss the emerging Code of Practice for Learning Analytics.  A new advisory group for the Code includes representatives from the National Union of Students, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Lancaster and Loughborough Universities, Bucks New University, The Open University, Croydon College and Jisc. A Code of Practice for Learning […]

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Institutional Use Network

Learning analytics network meeting – February in London

It was evident from my visits to universities and colleges in the summer that there’s a lot of interest in learning analytics and an increasing amount of experimentation with predictive modelling and other uses of data about learners and learning.  What was clear too was that people didn’t have a good picture about what was […]

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Co-design Ethics Systems

A student app for learning analytics

Many applications for learning analytics have been proposed, are under development or are already being deployed by institutions.  These range from prompting staff to intervene with students at risk of drop-out to attempting to understand whether some learning content or activity is effective. Much of this is about providing better information to staff about students and […]

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Code of Practice Ethics Legal Issues

Jisc releases report on ethical and legal challenges of learning analytics

Do institutions need to obtain consent from students before collecting and using data about their online learning activities? Should learners be allowed to opt out of having data collected about them? Could showing students predictions about their likelihood of academic success have a negative effect on their motivation and make them more likely to drop […]

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Legal Issues Open learning analytics

Examining open learning analytics – report from the Lace Project meeting in Amsterdam

The latest Lace Project event was held in the illustrious surroundings of the Allard Pierson Museum at Amsterdam University this week.  The focus this time was on open learning analytics.  After some lightening presentations on participants’ interests in the area, we split into groups to look at what exactly open meant in the context of […]

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Case Studies Institutional Use

Jisc releases new report on learning analytics in the UK

Jisc today released a new report: Learning Analytics: the current state of play in UK higher and further education.  It was written after a series of visits I made recently to universities and colleges across the UK which were known to be carrying out interesting work in learning analytics. I was inspired by campuses filled […]