‘My Point of Departure for Analytics is Extreme Skepticism’: Implications Derived from An Investigation of University Teachers’ Learning Analytics Perspectives and Design Practices

Abstract

The literature until 2020 has forecasted a significant uptake of learning analytics (LA) to support learning design in higher education. However, there remain only a few investigations into teachers’ course design practices and their perspectives on LA as a tool to support their design practices. This paper presents findings from an examination of 16 university teachers’ design practices and perspectives on LA at two Norwegian universities (The University of Oslo and Oslo Metropolitan University). On one hand, findings identified situational factors, feedback sources and teachers’ intuition as key influencers of teachers’ course design decisions. On the other hand, guided by principles of the technology acceptance model, this study identified mixed reactions amongst teachers regarding the awareness, understanding and potential use of LA to support course design practices. In particular, most teachers appreciated the formative and normative value of LA to provide more objective evidence about students’ learning patterns and to shape learning trajectories, but some were skeptical about the evaluative role where LA is used to evaluate teachers’ and students’ performance based on unnuanced data (e.g. no theory guidance) with limited depth in observation. This article contributes to the understanding of factors fundamental to linking LA to teachers’ course design practices by synthesizing findings to propose a ‘bi-directional LA-course design’ conceptual framework that clarifies key elements that influence teachers’ design practices and highlighting their implications for LA integration.