Teaching with Learning Analytics Learning Community 2023-2024
This learning community is designed to support instructors who want to begin exploring how learning analytics can help with everyday teaching and learning. The goal is to build a community of instructors who want to use small-scale learning analytics to inform everyday teaching for student success.
Description and Benefits
Canvas provides basic data about how students are using different aspects of your course site through the New Analytics tool. Other IU-supported tools integrated with Canvas such as Kaltura, Quick Check, Playposit, and Top Hat also provide information on how students are using the tool.
You can use these analytics to:
- Monitor student progress: Learning analytics can be used to monitor student progress and provide real-time feedback on their understanding of course material. This information can then be used to adjust instruction to better support student learning.
- Personalize instruction: Learning analytics can provide insights into each student's individual strengths, weaknesses, and learning preferences. With this information, instructors can tailor their approach to better meet the needs of each student and provide more effective support.
- Improve course design: Learning analytics can provide data-driven insights into student learning and behavior, which can inform decisions about course design and content delivery. This can help to ensure that instructional materials are effective and engaging for students.
How useful this data can be depends on how your course, content, and assignments are designed. This learning community is designed to provide a structured path to help instructors new to the concept and use of analytics to review data in Canvas for a previously taught course, redesign 2 or more assignments, activities, or instructional material to collect more useful data, gather additional information from your students to better contextualize the data, and analyze the new data you gather to identify potential future course improvements
In addition to the resources and support provided at the learning community meetings (six meetings over the course of the 2023-24 academic year), you will also have individual support from a CTL Digital Learning consultant and the IU Data Steward for learning analytics data
This is a low- to no-math project. Most data in the Canvas New Analytics tool is presented in graphic form.
Participants will receive $500 to support their efforts; half provided with the completion of fall semester activities and half provided with the completion of spring semester activities.
Eligibility
The Learning Community is open to anyone at IU Indianapolis, IU Columbus, or IU Fort Wayne who is an instructor of record on a course that they have taught in the past 2 years and who has reasonable surety that they will be teaching that same course again in the Spring 2024 semester.
This LC is best suited for instructors teaching classes:
- where student assessment is at least half quantifiable data (quizzes, tests, or other assignments incorporating questions where there is a single best answer). We will not be looking at textual data analysis which is a more advanced topic.
- with higher enrollments
This LC is also best suited for instructors who are new to analytics. We will focus on basic data that can be gathered directly from Canvas or from university-supported tools integrated into Canvas such as Kaltura, PlayPosit, and Quick Check. We will not be working with data coming from publisher tools such as Pearson's “My Lab” products or other university data sources.
Expectations
Members of the Learning Community will be expected to:
- attend 6 learning community meetings over the course of the 2023-24 academic year,
- All meeting dates and times TBD based on participants’ schedules.
- Meetings will be 1 hour long in Zoom
- Each meeting has a specific topic but will also include time for discussion of any questions, insights, etc. anyone has for the group.
- participate in two individual consultations (one in fall and one in spring) with a digital learning consultant or the learning analytics data steward during the fall semester
- redesign 2 or more assignments, activities, or instructional materials to collect more useful data in Canvas,
- submit a brief progress report at the end of the fall semester including the revised assignments/materials,
- teach the course in Spring 2024 with the revised assignments/materials and gather additional feedback from students at least twice during the semester,
- review the information you gathered from the course and use it to identify potential course improvements,
- submit a brief final report in May 2024 discussing the work you did as part of the learning community, what you learned from the data you gathered, how you could use what you learned to further improve the course, and what other information you would like to know.
Schedule
- May 15, 2023: Applications due
- May 30, 2023: Applicants notified
- Fall Meetings:
- Early August: Using analytics for early semester insights
- Late September: Designing assessments for useful data
- Late October: Understanding student “engagement” analytics and how to make them more meaningful
- Late November or early December: Sharing revisions and spring semester plans for peer feedback
- December 22, 2023: Progress Report due with revised assignments/materials
- Spring Meetings:
- Late March: Guest speaker from the eLearning Research and Practice Lab about IU initiatives in learning analytics
- Mid-May: Final report-out on how it went, what you learned, and what you’d like to do next
- May 30, 2024: Final Report due
Application
If you would like to join us as a member of this learning community, please complete the application form by May 15th.
Teaching with Learning Analytics” Learning Community Application