The data-driven approach in decision-making is now a reality for most companies. Private businesses, large enterprises, government agencies, and even an individual teacher in the classroom would all like to make decisions based on data. However, when it comes to education, the pace of analytics adoption significantly slows down. Why is that so?
In 2018 researchers from several European universities (Tsay et al, 2018) came together to identify key challenges that withhold the adoption of Learning Analytics (LA) in higher education institutions. Here is what they found:
- Demand on Resources. Successful implementation of LA requires a working technological infrastructure to collect and process large amounts of data, financial resources for the creation of such an infrastructure, and a sufficient amount of staff time and expertise.
- Issues of Ethics and Privacy. The collection of user data is subject to privacy and data protection risks, which tends to create resistance from stakeholders.
- Stakeholder Engagement and Buy-in. A different level of experience with data among stakeholders leads to discrepancies in understanding the goals and outcomes of LA implementation. This results in unequal engagement with teachers and affects the pedagogical grounding of LA technologies and implementation design.
- Lack of Leadership. It is fair to say that any innovation requires strong leadership, and Learning Analytics is not an exception here. Clear vision and leadership are essential to define directions for LA adoption and communicate them across all enterprises.
To handle these challenges, researchers developed the SHEILA framework, which consists of just 6 steps:
- Map political context. What problems is the company trying to solve with LA? Do these objectives correspond with the personal benefits of teachers and students?
- Identify key stakeholders. Who are the main users of LA? What are their responsibilities? How will the company obtain consent for data collection from the stakeholders? Who controls the data flow and safety?
- Identify desired behavior changes. What changes will LA bring to the current situation? How to communicate LA goals and functions to the main stakeholders?
- Develop engagement strategy. What data, when, and how will be collected to achieve the objectives? Who will be affected? How to communicate the results of analytics? How to distribute resources efficiently and fairly?
- Analyze internal capacity to effect change. How often can the company evaluate the security of data infrastructure? How to maintain data integrity? What will be the procedure for using data for research or teaching purposes? What training will be provided for stakeholders to incorporate LA into daily practice, if any?
- Establish monitoring and learning frameworks. What are the success metrics? Who and when will conduct the evaluation? What are the limitations of LA?
The full version of the SHEILA framework with actions, challenges, and questions is available here.
Educational analytics, like any other large-scale innovation, requires a systematic approach to its implementation. With the SHEILA framework at hand, LA adoption in your organization can receive a significant boost and start providing valuable insights into educational processes and learner behavior in no time.
- Gasevic, D., Tsai, Y. S., Dawson, S., & Pardo, A. (2019). How do we start? An approach to learning analytics adoption in higher education. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 36(4), 342-353.
- Tsai, Y. S., Moreno-Marcos, P. M., Tammets, K., Kollom, K., & Gašević, D. (2018, March). SHEILA policy framework: informing institutional strategies and policy processes of learning analytics. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (pp. 320-329).
