Chapter 9: Understanding Learning Analytics Across Practices

What is learning analytics, as a practice across different settings and for different purposes? This chapter addresses this question by considering diverse issues for the practice of learning analytics, including evidence, methods, and its systemic nature. It discusses what ways learning analytics is new when compared to other ways in which data are used in education. It considers evidence for the impact of learning analytics and the relationship of policies to its expectations, uses, and implementations. It shows how learning analytics can operate at a programmatic level to address large problems and also in a micro level of analytic events occurring when new data can be collected. It shows how learning analytics is a design science in the service of evidentiary pursuits where analysts make important decisions about what data to collect and how to assemble data to answer questions. This cross-cutting view provides insights for the further development of this emerging activity in educational research and practice.