Mediating learning with learning analytics technology: guidelines for practice

Figures & data

Figure 1. Challenges by educational goal.

Table 1. Recognising learning through reciprocity.

Major categories	Description	Sub-categories
Willingness	The sense that a learners has the desire to engage	Reciprocity in the classroom, learner response to feedback
Positive Personal Response	An own sense that the class or individual students are learning	Intuition, joy

Table 2. Recognising learning through practice.

Major categories	Description	Sub-categories
Retention	The learner is retained in the course of study or the module	Retention in modules, retention in study programmes
Demonstration of a skill	The learner is able to prove a new skill	High marks, successful practicals
Cohesion	The learner's work ‘makes sense’	The learner can engage on the topic, the learner's work is well-rounded

Table 3. Recognising Learning through Learner Satisfaction.

Major categories	Description	Sub-categories
Positive Learner Feedback	The learner communicates that they have learned something	Positive written evaluations, positive emails and informal conversations with learners, gifts from learners
Positive Institutional Environment	The presence of tools and systems that should support student learning	Institutional attitudes that are learner-centred, support for learners with different abilities

Table 4. Recognising learning through development.

Major categories	Description	Sub-categories
Social Presence	the learner brings their whole self into the classroom	Learners supporting other learners, active participation
Excitement and Energy	Learners are interactive such that the speed and quality of contributions increases and is dynamic	Long message threads, quick response times, increased participation from previous levels
Emergence of Discourse	The learners' interactions result in meaningful discourse	New ideas, transfer of ideas to other contexts

Table 5. Educator proxies for learning.

Indicators	Description of proxies
Willingness	learner behavioural change after feedback, learner reaction time to feedback, learner sentiment toward feedback
Retention	Module completion rates, study programme completion rates
Cohesion	Performance is steadily increasing or remaining above average, number of key concepts a learner includes in assignments in comparison with course materials, number of contributions on the forum, number of responses to contributions
Social Presence	Rate of response time between communications, number of contacts with other students, number of contributions on the forum, rate of activity per student
Demonstration of a skill	Percentage of improvement in marks, percentage of improvement in practical performance
Positive Learner Feedback	Learner sentiments in course evaluations, number of contacts between learner and educator, number of contacts between learner and institution
Positive Institutional Environment	Institutional sentiment in publications toward learners, ratio of support programmes to learners who needs them, participation rates of learners in support programmes, learner sentiment toward support programmes
Positive Personal Response	Educator sentiment toward the cohort
Excitement and Energy	Length of message threads, number of participants in each thread, rate of response times (individually and aggregate)
Emergence of Discourse	Number of new links brought into the discussion by learners (individual and aggregate), number of new concepts brought in by the learners (individually and aggregate), and all other indicators described under ‘Excitement and Energy’

Table 6. How learners recognise learning.

Major categories	Description	Sub-categories
Comparison with the Self	Comparisons between any previous state, set of behaviours or outcomes around a single individual	Previous Marks, previous performance of a skill, previous emotional state, previous social state, previous well-being
Comparison with Others	Any comparison involving a group of students in a single module, a course of study, a department, a faculty or the institution	Cohort comparisons, individual vs. cohort, individual vs. a selection, retention
Comparison with the Discipline	Any comparisons around proving competence by comparing the learners' outcomes with those expected by the target discipline	comparison with experts, comparisons with expectations of learner ability
Coherence	Having a sense for the domain and the ability to navigate it	Appreciation of the domain, sense-making arguments, access to discourse
Marks	Fixed ideas of good and bad marks, not directly related to comparisons with other students or past performance	Assignment marks, test marks, overall marks, ”
Recall	The ability to remember and recall information	Remembering key concepts, parsing and retaining written information
Feedback	Any information about learning that is gathered from human sources	Feedback from the tutor, direct feedback from other students, indirect feedback from other students

Figure 2. Metacognitive activity and intentions.

Table 7. Intentions behind affordances.

Intention	Description	Sub-categories
Orientation	Preparing the individual for entering the educational environment	Identifying prerequisites, setting expectations, orientation to the faculty
Intervention	Identifying opportunities for change	Timing interventions, evaluating interventions
Retention	Keeping students enrolled	Improving retention overall/across modules, identifying pinch points
Agency	Empowering educators and testing assumptions	Self-discovery, Experimentation with analytics
Reciprocity	Encouraging learners to share learning strategies	Identifying strategies, understanding different learner pathways
Reflection	Encouraging learners to think about their own learning	Defining goals, cataloguing research behaviours, good study habits
Accommodation	Uncovering and accommodating learners' needs	Delivering targeted content, creating different streams of content
Exposure	Bringing learners into contact with new ideas, experts and more knowledgeable peers	Distributing resources, structuring/representing student discourse
Cohesion	Supporting sense-making and assessment of sense-making	Determining the quality, volume and trajectory of discourse

Figure 3. Affordances and intentions.