The Features Learning Analytics Students Want the Most: Help Them Learn Over All Else

Abstract

To be effective, support based on learning analytics (LA) necessitates that students’ attitudes, needs, and expectations are taken into account. Recently, research exploring students’ needs and expectations has attracted the attention of LA researchers and practitioners driven by increasing focus on personalized learning and focus on the delivery of effective LA insights. Yet, most of such research comes from students who have a faint idea of LA, who do not firmly understand the potentials and the possible drawbacks inherent in LA. This current study aimed to fill this gap by surveying well-informed students —who completed an advanced course on LA— about the features they need from LA themselves. We also complemented our analysis with a network approach to understand the association and interplay between different needs. Our findings have shown that most of the students want LA features that help them perform their academic tasks: recommendations, feedback and reminders of deadlines. Students were most skeptical about comparing them with other students and suggesting other students as partners in academic work. The network analysis has confirmed such features and pointed out that resources and recommendations are the most central features that make students interested in LA. In a nutshell, students want LA to help them learn and support their learning journey over all else. © 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors.