Workshop objectives

1) Participants will discuss and critically reflect on the key action points to take in a systematic adoption of LA, and gain understanding of the potential challenges.

2) Participants will be able to use the SHEILA framework to develop a draft of an institutional LA policy that considers LA-related actions and challenges in their institutional contexts.

Target group

The half-day workshop will be open for anyone interested in institutional policy and strategic planning for LA, particularly those in the following roles in their institutions: policy makers, senior managers and decision makers, LA practitioners and researchers, LA project leaders, data protection and system officers, Information and Technology officers, and academic and student representatives.

Workshop organisers

Yi-Shan Tsai

Yi-Shan Tsai is a research associate in Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, with an affiliation to the Centre for Research in Digital Education in the Moray House School of Education. She holds a PhD and an MPhil degree in Education from the University of Cambridge. She is a co-investigator of a number of cross-European projects, including SHEILA (Supporting Higher Education to Integrate Learning Analytics), LALA (Building Capacity to Use Learning Analytics to Improve Higher Education in Latin America), and EMBED (Developing a European Maturity Model for Blended Education). She is a member of the Learning Analytics Policy Task Group at the University of Edinburgh. Her current research focuses on policy and strategy formation for learning analytics in higher education.

Dragan Gašević

Dragan Gašević is Professor of Learning Analytics in the Faculty of Education and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. Previously, he was a Professor and the Sir Tim O’Shea Chair in Learning Analytics and Informatics in the Moray House School of Education and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh (2015-2018) and Professor and Canada Research Chair in Semantic and Learning Technologies in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University. He served as the immediate past president (2015-2017) of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) and holds several honorary appointments in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and USA. A computer scientist by training and skills, Dragan considers himself a learning analyst who develops computational methods that can shape next-generation learning technologies and advance our understanding of self-regulated and social learning. Funded by granting agencies and industry in Canada, Australia, Europe, and USA, Dragan is a recipient of several best paper awards at the major international conferences in learning and software technology. Dragan had the pleasure to serve as a founding program co-chair of the International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK) in 2011 and 2012 and the Learning Analytics Summer Institute in 2013 and 2014, general chair of LAK’16, and a founding editor of the Journal of Learning Analytics (2012-2017). Dragan is a (co-)author of numerous research papers and books and a frequent keynote speaker.

Maren Scheffel

Maren Scheffel is an assistant professor within the Technology Enhanced Learning Innovations (TELI) department of the Open Universiteit’s Welten Institute, the Research Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology. With a background in computational linguistics she started to work in the field of technology-enhanced learning in 2009 and has since then been involved in the coordination and management (ROLE, LACE, CompetenSEA) as well as the research work (ROLE, LinkedUp, LACE, SHEILA, CompetenSEA, SafePAT) of several European projects. For her PhD that she obtained from the Open Universiteit in 2017, she developed the Evaluation Framework for Learning Analytics (EFLA). Next to progressing this work further, her research now also delves into the connection of learning analytics and learning design as well as visualisation techniques for dashboards. Maren has organised workshops and has served as a reviewer for journals and conferences on many occasions. She is member of the editorial board of the Journal of Learning Analytics, of the SoLAR SIG LACE and vice chair of the SURF SIG Learning Analytics.

Kairit Tammets

Kairit Tammets is the head of the Centre for Educational Technology and senior researcher of educational technology at the Tallinn University, School of Digital Technologies. She holds a PhD in educational sciences and MA in interactive knowledge environments from Tallinn University. Kairit’s research interests are related with the LA-enhanced evidence-based decision making in different educational contexts. She has been involved in organizing variety of scientific workshops and conferences.

Adolfo Ruiz-Calleja

Adolfo Ruiz-Calleja received his MSc and PhD degrees in telecommunications engineering from the University of Valladolid, Spain, in 2007 and 2013 respectively. He is currently working as a researcher in the Center for Educational Technology at Tallinn University. His research interests include learning analytics, distributed systems, data management and their application in formal and informal learning.

Pedro Manuel Moreno Marcos

Pedro Manuel Moreno Marcos is a PhD student and a pre-doctoral researcher through a FPU fellowship in the Department of Telematic Engineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He received his Bachelor in Telecommunications Technologies Engineering in 2015 in the same university as well as his Master Degrees in Telecommunication Engineering and Telematic Engineering, which were both obtained in 2017. He has participated in several research projects (including SHEILA) and his skills and experience include research and development in learning analytics, educational data mining and MOOCs.