The “IKEA Model” for pragmatic development of a custom learning analytics dashboard

Abstract

Many educators and learning analytics practitioners find themselves in ‘learning analytics limbo’, with access only to simplistic one-size-fits-all vendor-driven LA dashboards, as they wait for development of possible future LA solutions that would allow customizations that genuinely cater to differences in learning design and educator skills. We present here a simple and pragmatically oriented project that allows individual educators to build and customize an LA solution ‘at home’ with relatively simple tools. This open-source project takes advantage of data available to an educator via the LMS, and allows them to develop and customize an educator-facing dashboard that meets their teaching and learning design needs. This small-scale solution allows local educators and practitioners to continue to build their data literacy and LA-informed teaching skills, and to contribute to ongoing institutional learning through sharing their experience with institutional LA teams.