1. Digital Education
Synergies or conflicts? Relationship between learning analytics and student support in UK HEIs
Samantha Ahern
@2standandstare

2. Overview Why learning analytics and wellbeing?
The national picture: learning analytics
The national picture: student wellbeing and mental health
Overview of project & current findings
Questions?

3. #stepchange
“Institutions are encouraged to align learning analytics to the mental health agenda to identify change in students’ behaviours and to address risks and target support.”

4. The data
Image from a presentation by the University of Exeter
Green = currently in use
Yellow = would like to use
Red = not interested in using
All this data is behavioural -> changes in behaviour can signify a change is student wellbeing
Image source:

5. Learning Analytics Jisc LARG
Student-facing learning analytics solutions
Student well-being and mental health
Learning analytics for curriculum enhancement
Developing the evidence base to support better understanding of the impact of learning analytics
Northumbria University – early intervention scheme
Source:
Northumbria University: By mining new data sources, such as social media, researchers at Northumbria are developing an Early Alert Tool designed to identify students in crisis and deliver the help they need. Only one in three people who die by suicide are known to mental health services in the UK, emphasising the importance of spotting early warning signs.
The university already analyses student data to flag potential mental health issues, such as patterns in grades, lecture attendance records, library usage, and how often students log on to virtual learning environments. This funding will allow researchers to develop and test additional data points to help students in difficulty more effectively.

6. National: Student Wellbeing & Mental Health
Office for Students Challenge Competitions
University Mental Health Charter
Student Minds
SMaRteN
Universities UK
Minding Our Future, Suicide-safer Universities
Definition - Critical Compassionate Pedagogy (Hao, 2011)

7. Local: Student Health and Wellbeing
Objective 1: Establish a whole-university approach to student health and wellbeing
Action D: Make key concepts related to disability awareness, inclusive learning, health and wellbeing an integral part of relevant professional services staff and Personal Tutor training. Incorporate these concepts into curriculum development, design and governance.

8. Project: Synergies or Conflicts
The project will identify the current nature and purpose of student support and learning analytics implementations, and identify any synergies or conflicts between these two systems.
It aims to identifying how these can be aligned to better support student wellbeing and mental health, as recommended in the UUK #StepChange report.
writing down responses or ideas..

9. About Student support & wellbeing policies analysed
Institution Type and Focus
Pre 92
Post 92
Alternative Provider
Teaching Intensive 4 1
Research Intensive
Neither
7 HEIs recruited
Combination of providers
4 had learning analytics policies
Student support & wellbeing policies analysed
Identification of purpose of learning analytics program – in progress
Survey to identify data usage and sharing – in progress

10. Findings to date
Analysis of student support policies identified that at least one policy from each of the participating institutions included the term ‘monitoring’ and for 6 of the institutions at least one policy contained the term ‘data’.
However, it is not clear from these policies what the data is or how it is used.
At least one policy from two of the participating institutions contained the term ‘analytics’, and 1 policy from 1 institution contained the term ‘dashboard’.
6 responses to online survey, online 3 are fully complete and useful for analysis.

11. Thank you