Data management in Learning Analytics: terms and perspectives

Online teaching environments acquire extremely high granularity of data, both on users’ personal profiles and on their behaviour and results. Learning Analytics (LA) is open to numerous possible research scenarios thanks to the development of technology and the speed of data collection. One characteristic element is that the data are not anonymous, but they reproduce a personalization and identification of the profiles. Identifiability of the student is implicit in the teaching process, but access to Analytics techniques reveals a fundamental question: “What is the limit?” The answer to this question should be preliminary to any use of data by students, teachers, instructors and managers of the online learning environments. In the present day, we are also experiencing a particular moment of change: the effects of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 679/2016, the general regulation on the protection of personal data that aims to standardize all national legislation and adapt it to the new needs