In the Company of Others: Learning Analytics and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Big data is regularly used by higher education institutions to assess student progress toward their degree. However, faculty may not see much of themselves in that statistical picture, often encountering it as a stark numerical value of average time to degree, percentage of students retained, or the like. When faculty members gain access to big data, new possibilities open for framing questions that increase their impact on student success. This arena is new for the scholarship of teaching and learning, proposed as early as 2010 but only recently gaining traction. In this talk, I discuss research by a faculty team that is leveraging large-scale learning analytics to inform disciplinary instruction. Their work reveals opportunities to make major, evidence-based interventions in their courses in ways that respect faculty members disciplinary knowledge, their wisdom of practice, and students experiences. Teaching about 7000 students per year in the general education curriculum, this team from the life sciences, information sciences, social sciences, and humanities shows the value of collaboration to close the gap between teaching and learning to help students succeed.