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Learning analytics support and development
Analytics to support studying, teaching, advising and support, and education management.
This page describes what learning analytics solutions Aalto University offers and how you can get support for using them.
This page describes what learning analytics solutions Aalto University offers and how you can get support for using them.
Learning Analytics in Aalto University
What does learning analytics mean?
Learning analytics can be defined broadly as analysing the data generated by studying and teaching so that they can be better understood. This can be used to provide support to students and to develop teaching and training.
What are the benefits of learning analytics for different stakeholders?
Learning analytics can be used by students, teachers, staff participating in advising and support, programme directors and service personnel, each according to their work roles.
The aim of learning analytics is to understand and to proactively support the study and teaching implementations:
- For student: Learning analytics tools support students' study activity, systematic implementation of studies, development of study skills and study well-being.
- For teacher: Learning analytics tools help teachers evaluate and develop teaching methods and teaching materials, as well as help teachers to support students' work.
- For student advising and guidance: Learning analytics tools help to detect study-related support needs
- For degree and doctoral programmes: Learning analytics tools support the development of the university's programmes, teaching offerings and processes.
Learning analytics takes into account Aalto's study and teaching goals and aims to support their implementation
Learning analytics combines several areas and discipline. These have been explained in more detail in Aalto's Learning Analytics Policy (see the section in the end of this page), which guides development work and use. An updated version of the policy was published in autumn 2023.
- The goals and principles of studying and teaching at Aalto guide the use of analytics
- Legal (e.g. data privacy) and ethical elements are ensured as part of the use of analytics
- High-quality data on studies and teaching as well as analytics methods are one of the basis of analytics
- Tools for presenting and utilising analytics results are developed based on user needs
- Analytics is best utilised as integrated into teaching and guidance practices and tools
Learning analytics: Frequently asked questions and examples of use aims to bring the use of learning analytics on practical level. FAQs deal with general, student and teacher guestions.
Learning analytics solutions for several user groups
The use of learning analytics tools provided by the university is in its rather early stages.
Analytics tools for different user groups already exist, and new ones are being developed.
Mentioned below are the most central ones.
For course level information, MyCourses learning environment (link to MyCourses instructions) includes a reporting and analytics tool for students called Learner Metrics (link to Learner metrics instructions), which gathers information about the progress of ongoing and previous courses. Its purpose is to help the student to monitor and plan the course activities. The tool utilises data collected from MyCourses learning activities. Learner metrics presents detailed and aggregate data about course events and activities, such as completed or upcoming assignments. The information produced by Learner Metrics depends on what activities (data) the teacher has selected to be used for analytics.
For the whole study path information, analytics tools are under developed to be part of the MyStudies in service platform. These tools will help students to monitor and plan their studies. The student will see the study attainments, the amount of work and the skills learned in the courses (as described in course descriptions) in previous courses. To be implemented later, as described in student's Personal study plan in SISU, the information about the forthcoming studies can be used to plan the timings and the work effort. The goal is to pilot the analytics tool with a few degree programmes on spring 2024.
In order to monitor the course level study activity, the learning environment MyCourses (link to MyCourses instructions) has a reporting tool called Teacher metrics (link to Teacher metrics instructions), which gathers information for the teacher about the progress of students and the course elements on the courses they teach, such as information on the completion of course assignments and students' use of time in different areas or materials during the course. The tool utilises data collected from MyCourses learning activities. In order for the Teacher metrics tool to produce meaningful information for the teacher and the student, it is essential for the teacher to define the course activities from which the data should be collected. The use of learning analytics should be planned already as a part of course planning, for example, by asking: "What kind of information do I need about student activity and course activities at different stages of the course?".
The report tool "Course registration and course feedback data for teachers", which compiles course data, has been introduced in spring 2023. It provides teachers with aggregate information on the feedback on the courses they teach, as well as on the sum level information of the registered students' degree programmes and the courses they have previously completed. The report tool requires a user right.
Under development is analytics to support student advising and guidance, as part of the Student success hub service on the service platform. The development work is aligned with the student's MyStudies analytics. The main user groups of the tool are the academic advisors, the planners / coordinators of learning services in Aalto's schools and the programme directors. The analytics will provide information, among other things, about individual students' and student groups' study progress. The data can be filtered by the student/s, degree programme, courses, study attainments (credits and grades), the starting year of the students, time interval, etc. The piloting is planned for spring 2024, together with MyStudies analytics piloting.
Under development is Course lifecycle analytics, of which the purpose is to gather information for the teacher to be presented in one view: 'before the course' (background information of the enrolled students' programme, previous courses), 'during the course' (information about students' course activity and course elements), and 'after the course' (analytics of course attainments, success and bottlecks and course feedback report).
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The Degree programme report tool (PowerBI cloud service report accessible via the browser) is accessible to, e.g., degree programme directors, heads of majors and other other relevant school and LES staff.
The Degree programme report can be used to support monitoring and evaluation of programmes or majors or student progress. The tool provides group level statistics and a possibility to view student level data according to user rights.
The report contains multiple individual reports. They have been grouped according to themes: objectives, attractiveness, quality and results. The themes associated with monitoring and evaluating degree programmes are explained in more detail in the Programme director's handbook.
If there are any problems, or if you need user rights, please contact [email protected]. - Doctoral programme report (Power BI) (requires user rights)
You can use the doctoral programme report to support the evaluation of doctoral programmes and for monitoring the students' study progress.
If there are any problems, or if you need user rights, please contact [email protected].
Reports and statistics for supporting educational development can be found in this link
Please contact our helpdesk address [email protected] for any queries. Management Information Services
The page includes the following reports, among others:
- Aalto KPI dashboard
- Key Info -report
- Learning Steering Group LeSG dashboard
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aalto.fi -pages use analytics instructions can be found here
Reading permissions for the web-analytics data are granted for content editors and site administrators. Service provided by Communications Services
Do you need support for using learning analytics?
Learning analytics solutions are based on user needs and users also participate in tools development.
In general, the aim is to offer learning analytics as Aalto's shared solutions.
If Aalto's common tools do not meet your analytics and data needs, we aim to support the individual requests and assist in producing possible additional analyses.
We also support the development of data-assisted work and related skills (data literacy).
Please, contact us if you want to participate in the development of learning analytics.
Learning analytics experts and contacts in Aalso
Jiri Lallimo
senior specialist
Learning analytics lifecycle from policy work and development to implementation and support.
Programme director's Annual clock in service platform.
Support for data literacy in Aalto.
Amanda Sjöblom
specialist
Reporting and analytics services for education, Degree programme report tool, Programme director's onboarding support
Other important actors supporting the use of learning analytics and use of educational daa in general
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MyCourses-analytics as part of teaching
Management Information Services
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Support for reporting in the area of education and user rights for PowerBi-reports in Aalto. Helpdesk [email protected]
IT solutions ITS (contact info)
- Technical solutions for analytics in Aalto: Ville Kivimäki, Analytics solutions owner
Learning analytics policy in Aalto university
Aalto university Learning analytics policy aims to clarify the goals and principles of learning analytics in Aalto and define the use of data and analytics results.
Learning analytics: Frequently asked questions and examples of use
This page includes frequently asked questions and examples of the use of learning analytics.
The material will be updated along the development and the new practices with learning analytics.
Data literacy for Aalto community
Start your journey towards data-driven way of working already today!
Guidance for the use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at Aalto University
Guidance for the use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at Aalto University.
This service is provided by:
Learning Services
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