Why Learning Analytics?

Scenario : A student joins a prominent University. He takes up a course of his choice. But a few months into the course, his academic performance takes a plunge. Gradually the decline in his focus leads to him dropping out of the course. There were numerous other similar student profiles who met with the same fate. This trend has a domino effect on the University brand along with the loss of time and money for both the student and University. How do the Institutes prevent such scenarios ?

Was there a way to track student learning behavior, a way to understand where s/he was failing and intervene to help him complete the course? Learning analytics helps solve these problems via timely insights to the Institutes.

Facts : As per Social Market Foundation report, 6% of university students drop out after their first year, so retention is a huge focus for universities. According to another research, 76% of students believe better use of learning analytics could be key to tackling drop-out rates, reducing time to degree and better grades.

Traditionally, higher educational institutes have been struggling with the problems like low course completion rates & finding actionable insights on student success indicators. Institutions have a lot of data (from student information systems, declared data, VLE's etc.) that is used for the Learning Analytics.

Based on pre-defined KPI's, a Learning Analytics platform churns out actionable insights, which enables the decision makers to take actions resulting in much higher course completion rates for the students and overall in a higher student success rate among other benefits. Additionally, the Institutions can draw a lot of customized insights pertaining to various aspects of course delivery based on relevant KPI's.

Data from sources like the VLE, the SIS, library systems and students’ own declared data feed into the learning analytics warehouse. At the heart of the architecture is the learning analytics engine where predictive analytics are processed and lead to action coordinated by the alert and intervention system. Visualizations of the analytics for decision makers are available in dashboards and a student app allows students to view their own data and compare it with others.

Increasingly, a lot of corporate houses are also leveraging Learning Analytics to enhance their Learning & Development processes for employees to great results.

Used right from the K - 12 grades to the corporate level, Learning Analytics has the potential to revolutionize the entire learning process by helping learners excel like never before.