Abstract:
Increasingly, higher education (HE) providers leverage learning analytics (LA) for the optimisation of student engagement and success with a focus on improved academic outcome and retention. However, few studies have investigated the impact of analytics-informed tertiary teaching practice on the changing role and identity of teachers. The current study explores the teacher and student perspective on utilising an open-source LA tool in very large first year undergraduate courses in science, business and arts. The tool, OnTask, allows teachers to send personalised email messages to students based on their individual LA data. The overall aim of this study is to promote positive changes to learning design practice by involving teachers, student advisors, academic developers, and students to collaboratively co-generate new knowledge on how to address issues of student disengagement in very large, commonly team-taught undergraduate classes. Using a qualitative case study approach guided by participatory action research this paper presents a subset of data derived from semi-structured interviews with teachers (N=9) around changes to practice through their interactions with LA. An inductive analysis of interviews revealed two main themes, the first is challenges to implementation comprising LA expertise, workload issues, and LA effectiveness. The second theme, LA as enabler of good teaching, identified positive changes in teachers’ perceived approachability to students. Teachers were more compassionate and self-reflective using LA as a teaching tool. This key insight, together with the notion of creating a culture of care at scale in tomorrow’s HE will be discussed further.
