Learning Analytics

Educational Insights at Penn State

Penn State IT actively develops and supports a collaborative institutional investment in learning analytics designed to help empower academic advisers, instructors, and administrators, improve student success and inform educational decision-making.

Introduction

In the dynamic landscape of higher education, universities are actively seeking ways to enhance the student learning experience and its resultant outcomes. Learning analytics has emerged as a powerful tool in this pursuit, leveraging technologies to collect, analyze, and interpret educational data in order to provide valuable insights into student behavior, learning patterns, and potential challenges.

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Learning Analytics for Higher Education

By collaborating with academic departments and administrative units that support students, Penn State IT supports the development and implementation of various learning analytic applications. These applications aim to provide support for:

Retention of At-Risk Students

Early detection of students struggling in a course is crucial for timely intervention. Learning analytic tools have the power to provide insight into student online course engagement, flagging potential opportunities for instructors and academic advisers to engage in proactive intervention strategies.

Data Informed Pedagogy

Learning analytic data allows instructors to assess the effectiveness of course materials and teaching methods. By analyzing student performance and engagement, faculty can refine course structures and content delivery to cater to diverse learning styles and student populations.

Educational Insights for Academic Programs

Access to learning analytic data across an academic program can help academic administrators better understand the state of course delivery and student success. This data-driven approach allows academic programs to continuously improve their offerings and ensure students are well-equipped for success.

Optimizing Services through Data

Learning analytic data can provide insight into the learning tool usage across the enterprise. This data-driven approach enables service owners and managers to drive strategy around procurement, service optimization, training, and cost recovery.

Learning Analytic Applications at Penn State

The Data Empowered Learning team is responsible for developing learning analytic applications that provide operational data to members of the University community who support student success.

The team leverages data science approaches and methodologies to deliver near real-time insights directly through personalized web-based applications.

Course Insights

Course Insights is a Canvas LTI that enables instructors to reflect on data that describes the population of students enrolled in their courses. It includes data on population-level student demographics, majors and minors, semester standing, prior enrollment summaries, and more.

Elevate

Developed in collaboration with the Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), Elevate provides academic advisers with timely, actionable insight into a student’s online course activity.

Collaborative Approach to Learning Analytics

The success of learning analytic initiatives relies on a collaborative approach. The Data Empowered Learning team works closely with administrative and academic departments to ensure our learning analytic tools meet the institution’s business and policy needs. Examples of our collaborators include, but are not limited to, the following:

The Office of the University Registrar
The Office of Ethics and Compliance
The Office of Undergraduate Education
The Division of Undergraduate Studies

Industry Collaboration for Learning Analytics

The digital learning ecosystem has rapidly evolved to encompass data, analytics, tools, course materials, technology vendors, and strategic partnerships. As a leading R1 institution, Penn State is an active member of higher education organizations that advance standards, best practices, and technological innovations. The Data Empowered Learning team represents Penn State through active participation and collaboration with the following organizations:

Unizin Consortium

Unizin is a member-based nonprofit consortium that enables member institutions to build technology solutions, establish relationships, and pursue research that no single institution could achieve cost-effectively on its own. As a consortium member, Unizin provides Penn State with a suite of data services, standards and solutions to truly integrate and scale data-informed, digital learning ecosystems. Unizin also leverages the purchasing power of the collective to provide affordable access to digital course materials and learning tools that are powering the future of higher education.

1EdTech

1EdTech is a united community committed to achieving an open, trusted, and innovative education technology ecosystem that services the lifeline needs of every learner. 1EdTech provides the leadership and collaboration needed to shape the future of education. Through community-developed open standards, they enable digital learning connectivity, data insights, and improved product choice.

Conclusion

Learning analytics offer a transformative approach to education, fostering data-driven decision-making to improve student learning experiences and outcomes. By providing robust infrastructure, security measures, and tools, the Data Empowered Learning Team at Penn State creates an environment where educators, academic advisers, instructional designers, program chairs, and others can leverage the power of data to personalize learning, identify struggling students, and continuously refine pedagogy.