Students’ Expectations of Learning Analytics in a Swedish Higher Education Institution

Abstract

The potential of learning analytics (LA) to improve learning and teaching is high. Yet, the adoption of LA across countries still remains low. One reason behind this is that the LA services often do not adequately meet the expectations and needs of their key stakeholders, namely students and teachers. Presently, there is limited research focusing on the examination of the students’ expectations of LA across countries, especially in the Nordic, largely highly digitalized context. To fill this gap, this study examines Swedish students’ attitudes of LA in a higher education institution. To do so, the validated survey instrument, Student Expectations of Learning Analytics Questionnaire (SELAQ) has been used. Through the application of SELAQ, the students’ ideal and predicted expectations of the LA service and their expectations regarding privacy and ethics were examined. Data were collected in spring 2021. 132 students participated in the study. The results show that the students have higher ideal expectations of LA compared to the predicted ones, especially in regards to privacy and ethics. Also, the findings illustrate that the respondents have low expectations in areas related to the instructor feedback, based on the analytics results. Further, the results demonstrate that the students have high expectations on the part of the university in matters concerning privacy and ethics. In sum, the results from the study can be used as a basis for implementing LA in the selected context.