Student Centred Design of a Learning Analytics System

Abstract

Current Learning Analytics (LA) systems are primarily designed with University staff members as the target audience; very few are aimed at students, with almost none being developed with direct student involvement and undertaking a comprehensive evaluation. This paper describes a HEFCE funded project that has employed a variety of methods to engage students in the design, development and evaluation of a student facing LA dashboard. LA was integrated into the delivery of 4 undergraduate modules with 169 student sign-ups. The design of the dashboard uses a novel approach of trying to understand the reasons why students want to study at university and maps their engagement and predicted outcomes to these motivations, with weekly personalised notifications and feedback. Students are also given the choice of how to visualise the data either via a chart-based view or to be represented as themselves. A mixed-methods evaluation has shown that students' feelings of dependability and trust of the underlying analytics and data is variable. However, students were mostly positive about the usability and interface design of the system and almost all students once signed-up did interact with their LA. The majority of students could see how the LA system could support their learning and said that it would influence their behaviour. In some cases, this has had a direct impact on their levels of engagement. The main contribution of this paper is the transparent documentation of a User Centred Design approach that has produced forms of LA representation, recommendation and interaction design that go beyond those used in current similar systems and have been shown to motivate students and impact their learning behaviour.