Beliefs, Values and Emotions in Education Practitioners’ Engagements with Learning Analytics in Higher Education

The use of learning analytics (LA), defined as personalized learning environments through the continuous measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their context, is rapidly expanding. A growing body of literature has questioned the benefits attributed to LA solutions and raised a number of concerns about the current developments in the education sector. However, we know little about how the beliefs, values, and emotions of different groups of educational practitioners shape how they engage with learning analytics technologies and influence the evolution of the cultures of practice shaping the adoption of learning analytics. Here we report on research that asks: how do culturally situated beliefs, values, and emotions shape UK-based higher education practitioners’ engagements with learning analytics? We conducted 34 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups with staff from a provider of digital services for UK higher education and staff from UK universities. With insights from this research, we aim to contribute to empower practitioners in higher education and relevant stakeholders to foster the development of critical and reflective data cultures that are able to exploit the possibilities of learning analytics while being critically responsive to their societal implications and limitations.