Adopting Learning Analytics to Inform Postgraduate Curriculum Design: Recommendations and Research Agenda

Abstract

Understanding student sentiment plays a vital role in understanding the changes that could or should be made in curriculum design at university. Learning Analytics (LA) has shown potential for improving student learning experiences and supporting teacher inquiry. Yet, there is limited research that reports on the adoption and actual use of LA to support teacher inquiry. This four-year longitudinal study captures sentiment of postgraduate students at a university in Ireland, by integrating LA with the steps of teacher inquiry. This study makes three important contributions to teaching and learning literature. First, it reports on the use of LA to support teacher inquiry over four one-year cycles of a Master of Science in Business Analytics programme between 2016 and 2020. Second, it provides evidence-based recommendations on how to optimise LA to support teacher inquiry, with specific attention as to how these can improve the assimilation of LA into the curriculum design and delivery. Third, the paper concludes with a research agenda to help improve the adoption and integration of LA in the future.