Collaboration Analytics Need More Comprehensive Models and Methods: An Opinion Paper

Abstract

As technology advances, learning analytics is expanding to include students’ collaboration settings. Despite their increasing application in practice, some types of analytics might not fully capture the comprehensive educational contexts in which students’ collaboration takes place (e.g., when data is collected and processed without predefined models, which forces users to make conclusions without sufficient contextual information). Furthermore, existing definitions and perspectives on collaboration analytics are incongruent. In light of these circumstances, this opinion paper takes a collaborative classroom setting as context and explores relevant comprehensive models for collaboration analytics. Specifically, this paper is based on Pei-Ling Tan and Koh’s ecological lens (2017, Situating learning analytics pedagogically: Towards an ecological lens. Learning: Research and Practice, 3(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2017.1305661), which illustrates the co-emergence of three interactions among students, teachers, and content interwoven with time. Moreover, this paper suggests several factors to consider in each interaction when executing collaboration analytics. Agendas and recommendations for future research are also presented.