Journal of Learning Analytics · 2019 · 223 citations · 14 references
EducationEducation PolicyEducational TechnologyData AnalyticsData ManagementEducational Data MiningData-driven InstructionLearning AnalyticsData Access For ResearchersEthics In Learning AnalyticsLearning Analytics GovernanceSociotechnical SystemsSociotechnical Systems Design
Learning analytics are framed as sociotechnical systems shaped by social, cultural, political, and economic forces, and researchers must openly discuss their values and politics in widespread educational contexts. The article surveys emerging concerns about learning analytics, highlighting risks of reinforcing inequity and profit‑driven agendas, and proposes changes toward more open, user‑controlled, and context‑responsive analytics. It advocates designing analytics tools that are open, accessible, provide genuine user control, reflect students’ lived realities, and rethinking the industry’s political economy. The authors identify that learning analytics can entrench the status quo, disempower vulnerable groups, and subjugate public education to a profit‑led data economy, and suggest possible reforms.
This article summarizes some emerging concerns as learning analytics become implemented throughout education. The article takes a sociotechnical perspective — positioning learning analytics as shaped by a range of social, cultural, political, and economic factors. In this manner, various concerns are outlined regarding the propensity of learning analytics to entrench and deepen the status quo, disempower and disenfranchise vulnerable groups, and further subjugate public education to the profit-led machinations of the burgeoning “data economy.” In light of these charges, the article briefly considers some possible areas of change. These include the design of analytics applications that are more open and accessible, that offer genuine control and oversight to users, and that better reflect students’ lived reality. The article also considers ways of rethinking the political economy of the learning analytics industry. Above all, learning analytics researchers need to begin talking more openly about the values and politics of data-driven analytics technologies as they are implemented along mass lines throughout school and university contexts.
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