Learning Analytics in Open, Distance, and Digital Education (ODDE)

Abstract

AbstractData, and specifically student data, has always been an integral part of good teaching as well as providing evidence for strategic and operational planning, resource allocation, pedagogy, and student support. As Open, Distance, and Digital Education (ODDE) become increasingly datafied, institutions have access to greater volumes, variety, and granularity of student data, from more diverse sources than ever before. This provides huge opportunity for institutions, and specifically educators and course support teams, to better understand learning, and provide more appropriate and effective student support.With the emergence of learning analytics (LA) in 2011, the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs, gained momentum, both as research focus and practice. Since then, LA have become institutionalized in many higher education institutions, mostly in residential institutions located in the Global North, and established a prolific presence in research on student learning in digitized environments. While LA has become institutionalized in the Open University (UK), it remains an emerging research focus and practice in many ODDE institutions across the world.This chapter considers the implications of LA for ODDE research and practice by first providing a brief overview of the evolution of LA, and specifically the theoretical influences in this evolution. A selection of major research findings and discourses in LA are then discussed, before the chapter is concluded with some open questions for a research agenda for LA in ODDE.