Purpose

An Infographic by Open Colleges

Purposefulness

In today's world of constantly being connected to the 'grid' and having constant online interaction, analytics are absolutely everywhere.  In this digital world I constantly feel like my every move, purchase, typed key is being stored and analyzed (mostly for marketing purposes).  To be honest, sometimes it really just freaks me out!!!  For example, I purchased an item from the Sears store using a mall gift card and I put the remaining balance on my check card.  Later that day, I was on Facebook and one of the advertisements was from Sears!!!  Now I know that I definitely had not used that computer to ever search or even look at anything from Sears!  I don't have proof, but I'm certain that somehow that information from that purchase was tracked, matched, and linked to my Facebook account.  Ugh!  

Well, the point in sharing that story with you is that analytics are truly present everywhere in today's digital world.  This comes with disadvantages and advantages.  

Fortunately, when used with good intent and in a purposeful way, using analytics to analyze, interpret, and reflect on what and how students are learning will improve the educational process!  Thus the term, LEARNING ANALYTICS!

For centuries, educators have been analyzing the learning process and reflecting upon what students have learned.  What is changing and what makes this an emerging trend is now there are digital tools and technologies (not just paper and pencil exams and other traditional assessments) that can do the assessing and analyzing in a more efficient and effective way. 

Usefulness/Why use learning analytics? 

Simply put, it is the process of analyzing learning through the use of tools and then using that information to guide students' learning and to evaluate the learning process. Analyzing learning is by no means new. Educators and theorists have always analyzed the learning process as it is almost an inherent part of learning. Even my 3rd grade son was able to talk with me about how his teacher uses learning analytics.  Listen.

Educators will use analytics to improve the process of analyzing how and what students are learning and to tailor and adjust their instructional strategies and teaching procedures to meet the needs of students so that they may learn and demonstrate mastery of the content.

According to the 2015 Horizon Report:

"Learning analytics is an educational application of web analytics, a science that is commonly used by businesses to analyze commercial activities, identify spending trends, and predict consumer behavior. Education is embarking on a similar pursuit into data science with the aim of learner profiling, a process of gathering and analyzing large amounts of detail about individual student interactions in online learning activities. The goal is to build better pedagogies, empower students to take an active part in their learning, target at-risk student populations, and assess factors affecting completion and student success"