Learning analytics is a type of data analysis that enables teachers, lecturers, educational experts, and administrators of online learning to search for students' online traces and information related to learning processes. The primary goal of learning analytics in online classrooms and computer-assisted instruction is to improve the learning experience and the learning process.
According to many thought leaders in post-COVID education events, it provides a variety of benefits to students, teaching staff, and higher education administration Prediction and identification of target courses, curriculum development and improvement, improved student learning outcomes, improved instructor performance, and monitoring of student dropout and retention are among other benefits. Higher education institutions are encouraged to use learning analytics in online teaching and learning. Here are a few advantages:
Online education analytics can help students understand themselves and their progress with more detail than ever before. Learning analytics is just one way for students to view their actions, constructively reflect on them, and adjust accordingly. An online system would allow students to feel more self-sufficient when managing themselves and figuring out where they need improvement. These apps would also be able to tell you how well you're doing compared to others your age who are studying the same thing as you are or even just people in general, allowing you to judge your achievements accurately.
Learning analytics data will allow faculty to better monitor students' progress and understand how they use course resources. Analytics can help answer less obvious questions. Consider this: how does variation in the use of course resources affect learning outcomes? It is necessary for tracking systems to monitor student resource utilization and learning outcomes data. If differences in the use of specific learning resources are not associated with expected learning outcomes, we may need to reconsider their use.
Analytics will enable instructors to evaluate their performance and seek more evidence to guide instructional improvement.
Learning analytics lets program directors and administrators see how well their program performs in real-time. Learning analytics can allow meaningful comparisons across courses and the potential need to drill down into specific faculty, student, and course-level data.
Learning analytics opens new avenues for answering fundamental questions about factors associated with learning outcomes, mainly because analytic approaches can examine micro and macro student and instructor behavior patterns and their relationships with desired learning outcomes.
Studies on online learning often overgeneralize without considering various parameters such as content, demographic of students, or disciplinary standards. Using large-scale learning analytics techniques has the potential to provide more detailed examinations of how online environments affect one's ability to learn. This includes investigation into what factors affect crucial skills, as well as complex interactions between said factors.
Analytics can help developers understand how people interact with their plans, how that interaction affects various outcomes, and how environmental changes affect outcomes. Other industries routinely employ data mining techniques and experimentation with their systems to improve user experience. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others are constantly experimenting with subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the functionality and design of their products, examining the impact on user behavior.
And now, the education industry offers similar opportunities to designers of learning systems. Educators, instructors, and researchers, along with other key stakeholders, have a brilliant chance to explore this field at the global education conference, the Education 2.0 Conference.
Shobhit Behal is a member of the Education 2.0 Conference’s organizing committee, has a sharp eye for details, and is keen on learning new things daily. There is so much to learn out there, which is why Education 2.0 Conference’s Dubai edition is ready to explore topics varying from EdTech fraud/scam/spam to combating the global talent shortage through skill development programs.
