(SpringerBriefs in Business Process Management) Learning Analytics Cookbook_ How to Support Learning Processes Through Data Analytics and Visualizatio

Chapter 2
Learning Analytics Kitchen
Abstract Among trending topics that can be investigated in the field of educational
technology at present—Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Open Educational
Resources (OERs), wearables, and so on—there is a high demand for using educational
data to improve the whole learning and teaching cycle, from collecting and
estimating students’ prior knowledge of a subject to the learning process and its
assessment. Therefore, educational data science cuts through almost all educational
technology disciplines. Before we can start applying learning analytics, it is good to
have more holistic understanding of learning analytics and its surrounding environment.
This chapter describes the field of learning analytics and recent research to
give a better overview of the concept.
Keywords Framework · Dimensions · Scope
2.1 Defining the Learning Analytics Niche
Using data to inform decision-making in education and training is not new, but the
scope and scale of its potential impact on teaching and learning has increased by
orders of magnitude over the last few years. We are now at a stage at which data can
be automatically harvested at high levels of granularity and variety. Analysis of these
data has the potential to provide the evidence-based insights into learners’ abilities
and patterns of behavior that can guide curriculum design and delivery to improve
outcomes for all learners and change assessments from mainly quantitative and
summative to more qualitative and formative, thereby contributing to national and
European economic and social well-being.
Data science extracts knowledge and insights from data, and data science in the
educational context is termed learning analytics. Learning analytics is an umbrella
term for data-science-related research questions from overlapping fields like the
educational, computer, and data science fields. The umbrella term has many facets
and can be described from many levels and angles.
Learning analytics can be applied to the single-course level, a collection of
courses, or a whole curriculum. Buckingham Shum (2012) introduced the notion
© The Author(s) 2020
R. Jaakonmäki et al., Learning Analytics Cookbook, SpringerBriefs in Business
Process Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43377-2_2
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