Learning Analytics: The Emergence of a Discipline. (October 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Siemens, George
• Other Names: Haythornthwaite Caroline guest-editor.; de Laat Maarten guest-editor.; Dawson Shane guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: American behavioral scientist. Volume 57:Number 10(2013)
• Page Start: 1380
• Page End: 1400
• Publication Date: 2013-10
• Subjects: learning analytics -- models -- distributed learning; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1177/0002764213498851
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0002-7642

Abstract

Recently, learning analytics (LA) has drawn the attention of academics, researchers, and administrators. This interest is motivated by the need to better understand teaching, learning, "intelligent content, " and personalization and adaptation. While still in the early stages of research and implementation, several organizations (Society for Learning Analytics Research and the International Educational Data Mining Society) have formed to foster a research community around the role of data analytics in education. This article considers the research fields that have contributed technologies and methodologies to the development of learning analytics, analytics models, the importance of increasing analytics capabilities in organizations, and models for deploying analytics in educational settings. The challenges facing LA as a field are also reviewed, particularly regarding the need to increase the scope of data capture so that the complexity of the learning process can be more accurately reflected in analysis. Privacy and data ownership will become increasingly important for all participants in analytics projects. The current legal system is immature in relation to privacy and ethics concerns in analytics. The article concludes by arguing that LA has sufficiently developed, through conferences, journals, summer institutes, and research labs, to be considered an emerging research field.