Scope

Development and implementation of LA is strongly needed, because it enables to implement quality measurement in teaching and learning. Practical solutions for scenarios in data-lean environments or for small-scale organizations are rarely adopted. The lack of know-how and resources prevents these stakeholders, including educators, researchers, university administrators, and others interested in the field, to start experimenting with their own LA initiatives and making these solutions more mature and applicable.

For the mission to support practitioners, we initiated the project “LA4S – Learning Analytics and Learning Process Management for Small Size Organizations in Higher Education”. The LA4S project is dedicated to gather practical solutions, provide a tool box for practitioners, and publish a cook book with concrete learning analytics recipes for everyone. This project aims at bringing more discussion to this transdisciplinary effort to find an approach how to provide the knowledge and access to LA tools, methods, and datasets for small educational organizations.

In more detail, the main objectives of this project are to integrate already carried out experiences in the LA research field, and to transfer these innovations into the education environment of small size higher education institutions. In our approach, we strive to showcase the latest results, methodologies, tools, strategies, and models for this targeted audience with an aim to lower their threshold to build up their own LA experiences. In the scope of this project we also compose a relevant information package from the existing literature to introduce the educators to LA, and present  the related topics concerning ethics, privacy, and essential theoretical approaches. Moreover, we compile practical solutions that will enable educators to try out different LA approaches, while presenting them in an easy and appealing way.