<p>Despite the increasing interest in learning analytics over the past decade, there remains relatively little integration with pedagogical practice in higher education. The limited engagement of teachers in the design and development of teacher facing dashboards has been cited as a significant issue. As the purpose of a teacher facing dashboard is to enable deep insights into student learning as a basis for data-driven decision making, successful integration depends on compatibility with pedagogical needs and intentions. In this paper, we outline findings from a series of focus groups with nautical simulator instructors (<i>n</i> = 12) from three different universities in Sweden, Norway and Finland. During focus groups, the design concept of multimodal learning analytics was presented and discussed, with focus on the usefulness of a teacher-facing learning analytics dashboard in addressing typical instructional concerns during simulation-based training. In the analysis, we focus on the juxtaposition between user wants, needs and resistance, prioritizing the simulator instructors’ pedagogical concerns in learning analytics design. The findings highlight a crucial gap between the technological capabilities of learning analytics and the practical, everyday challenges of teaching in simulation-based environments. To bridge this gap, it is essential to design dashboards that are not only professionally intuitive and data-rich but also adaptable to the specific pedagogical strategies of instructors. Ultimately, successful implementation depends on a user-centred design process that integrates instructors’ perspectives, ensuring that learning analytics tools align with the complexities of simulation-based training.</p>