Abstract
Applying learning analytics (LAs) to actual teaching scenarios is a huge challenge. One of the problems that is required to be solved is how to combine LAs with pedagogy. Activity theory (AT) provides a conceptional tool for social human activities including objects and tools. Combining AT and pedagogical strategies as an analysis framework, this chapter analyzes LA application scenarios in seven components: subject, objective, community, tools, rules, division of labor, and outcomes. And learning theories present an in-depth analysis of rules. Conclusion shows in the LA application: teachers and students are main subjects; knowledge mastery is a common object; researchers and administrators play important roles while teachers have no specific teaching guidance to follow; presentation strategies of content are abundant; LAs integrate with multiple assessments; behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism embodied at different degrees; measurement of LAs application are diverse; not only learners, but characteristics of tasks need to be further studied.
TopIntroduction
Learning analytics (LAs) has penetrated into modern learning activities. The Horizon Report 2011 putted LAs in the list of four to five years widespread adoption educational technologies (New Media Consortium, 2011), whereas LAs become a common part of the educational technologies in the Horizon Report 2020 (Educause Publications, 2020). As an integral part of the education system, LAs affords tools for studying learning behaviors of students, strengthening adaptive or personalized learning and improving potential learning efficiency. LAs plays useful roles in the effective usage of educational big data and the construction of ubiquitous learning environment. On the other hand, the development of LAs demands the combination of learning behaviors, pedagogic strategies and educational decision-making process.
However, as a long-existed human activity, involving new tools into education’s normal operation is complicated. The application of LAs follows certain rules and patterns. For instance, the RAPID outcome mapping approach (ROMA) engages LAs in the institution community of stakeholders (Macfadyen et al., 2014). A generic framework for LAs offered by Greller and Drachsler (2012) incorporates LAs with learning activities and pedagogic strategies. A preliminary model of pedagogical learning analytics intervention design focus on addressing questions about how to directly impact instruction and learning activities using LAs (Wise, 2014). It could be seen from the above, stakeholders, pedagogies and learning process are what should be concerned when integrating LAs into a given education context. Those involved factors try to find their own places in education activities, which is a group human activity carefully designed with purpose, result orientation, and clear division of labor. In this way, Activity theory (AT) offers a general analysis framework. Based on Vygotsky’s foundational work, the third generation of AT proposed by Engeström (1987/2015) try to address questions of diversity and to understand the interaction between different perspectives. The third-generation of AT framework consists of seven basic factors: subject, object, rules, tools, community, division of labor and outcomes. The interaction between those factors in the framework makes a conceptional tool available for the application of LAs in the education context which considers the dynamic interactivity among stakeholders, tools, pedagogy, objects and outcomes. In order to better understand the integration of LAs with learning and teaching process, this study applies AT to analyze the involved subject, objects, community, LA tools and pedagogy strategies in LAs application context.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Subject: Users of tools or target group of tools, involving the characteristics of the target group.
Pedagogies: A kind of tacit knowledge, closely related to learning process as instructions to implement effective teaching. The aim of pedagogy is to promote learner develop self-regulation skills.
Outcomes: The positive and negative impact on users or the application scope of the tool.
Learning Analytics: Learning analytics aims at establishing a virtuous circle between teaching and learning process in the education environment through the analysis of student-centered data according to certain algorithm.
Object: What the subject what to achieve through the tools using. Sometimes have two level of meanings, referring to the goal when the tool itself is designed, and users of the tool also have their own goals.
Rules: In this chapter a term related to pedagogy, mainly involving two aspects, showing three contents: content (the organization of the content, the presentation or delivery strategy of the content), assessment, learning theory thoughts embodied the first two.