Learning Analytics
There are varieties of data across Learning (e.g. Canvas eLearning), Academic (e.g., Student Information Systems), and Institutional (e.g., graduation rates) repositories that can be harnessed to provide comprehensive insight into student success improvement. Our team helps facilitate access to this restricted data and assists with interpretation and action-taking via a variety of data analysis services, resources and tools.
Consultation services are free and available to all instructors and credit-bearing programs. We are committed to providing dedicated educator support in collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting learning and student engagement data for direct course improvement as well as broader pedagogical research. There is no one-size-fits-all solution as learning context is vastly different across the institution.
Likewise, we seek to foster more self-regulated learning behavior by directly empowering students with their own data and opportune support resources. Adding more transparency to the learning process, defined as “engaging teachers and students in focusing together on how college students learn what they learn and why teachers structure learning experiences in particular ways,” has been shown to improve multiple student success factors: academic confidence, sense of belonging, employer-valued skills, and retention (Winkelmes et al., 2016).
Resources for Using Learning Analytics Tools
There are many tools available to UF faculty and staff (including graduate students) for use in learning analytics. Below, we have developed and curated several professional development workshops on how to use some of the most common statistical computing and graphics programs. If you are interested in learning more about these tools, we encourage you to contact us for a consultation on how these resources can be best applied in your work.
- Unizin Data Services and Solutions training (Google Cloud Platform BigQuery tutorials available to approved researchers for using the Unizin Data Platform to access UF eLearning Canvas data; contact us to get started)
LinkedIn Learning offers self-paced, online tutorials for common business software. We have created some custom learning paths to complement additional training opportunities available at UF.
- Microsoft Power BI
- Canvas Analytics provides data visualization of student performance and activity.
- My Learning Analytics (MyLA) is a student-facing dashboard within a Canvas eLearning course that can be enabled by the course’s instructor. This tool has been adopted as part of a UFIT pilot study with the goal of empowering students to improve their own academic outcomes through a better understanding of their online course performance and progress.
- Canvas Quiz Statistics provides question item analysis and individual student performance reports for Classic and New Quizzes.
- Microsoft Power BI Pro is a data visualization tool that has row level security for scoping data to authorized users based on Gatorlink credentials.
- Unizin Data Platform combines our Canvas data with data from other educational tools and the Student Information System. This more comprehensive learning environment dataset is leveraged for both university business and educational research purposes.
- Canvas Analytics: Along with Score Details in the Grades tab, students can see data visualization of their own assignment grades in Analytics, as well as monitor their engagement via Page Views and Participation metrics and track Inbox messages with instructors.
- My Learning Analytics (MyLA) is an additional student-facing dashboard within Canvas eLearning courses that instructors can choose to enable. This tool has been adopted as part of a UFIT pilot study with the goal of empowering students to improve their own academic outcomes through a better understanding of their online course performance and progress. While there is some feature overlap with Canvas tools, students would still benefit from MyLA’s aggregated peer reference values.
Customized Data Reporting for Instructors and Educational Researchers
We understand the substantial impact that instructors have in the student experience and how frequently teachers initiate connections to additional student support services. We provide customized dashboards and reports to instructors, beyond the analytics available within Canvas eLearning, for data-informed pedagogical decision-making and educational research. A previous outcome of this vision for improving the flow of data back to units is the UF Student Learning Outcome Dashboard. Additionally, we can provide various levels of service or data access to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL), also known at UF as Research in Teaching and Learning (RiTL). We hope you contact us to learn more about how we may be able to create a customized product for your unit or research needs.
