Jisc is a UK organization that aims to advance digital technology in education and research. Their Learning Analytics project has three core parts: a learning analytics service, toolkit, and community. The service provides dashboards and tools to analyze student data from various sources to identify at-risk students and enable interventions. It follows an open architecture approach. The toolkit includes guidance on best practices like privacy and consent. The community aspect involves events, blogs, and mailing lists to bring people together around learning analytics.

1. Inside Government - London
8/7/2015 Jisc Learning Analytics

2. Jisc’s Learning Analytics Project
»About Jisc
»Learning Analytics
»Jisc’s Open Learning Analytics Project
»Finding out more
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3. About Jisc…
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4. Mission
To enable people in higher education,
further education and skills in the UK
to perform at the forefront of
international practice by exploiting
fully the possibilities of modern digital
empowerment, content and
connectivity
Vision
To make the UK the most
digitally advanced
education and research
nation in the world

5. What does Jisc do?
Does 4 things…
Providing and developing a
network infrastructure and
related services that meet the
needs of the UK research and
education communities
Supporting the procurement
of digital content for UK
education and research
Our network of national and
regional teams provide local
engagement, advice and
support to help you get the
most out of our service offer
Our R&D work, paid for entirely
by our major funders, identifies
emerging technologies and
develops them around your
particular needs

6. Co-design challenges
Research at risk (R@R)
Prospect to alumnus (P2A) Learning analytics
Digital learning & capabilitiesImplementing FELTAG
Business intelligence
Hosting platform Hosting platform

7. About Learning Analytics…
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8. What do we mean by Learning Analytics?
The application of big data techniques such as machine based learning
and data mining to help learners and institutions meet their goals:
For our project:
» Improve retention (current project)
» Improve achievement (current project)
» Improve employability (current project)
» Personalised learning (future project)
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9. Jisc’s Learning Analytics Project
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Three core strands:
Learning
Analytics Service
Toolkit Community
Jisc Learning Analytics

10. Jisc’s Learning Analytics Service
and Open Learning Analytics Architecture
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Learning
Analytics Service

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Student App Dashboards
Alert and
Intervention
Structured Data
Machine based
learning
Learning Records Store
Transformations
/Mining
About the
student
Activity Data
Consent
Data
Collection
Data
Storage
and Analysis
Presentation
and Action
Architecture overview

12. Our project partners
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13. Presentation and Action Layer
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14. Presentation and Action Layer Pt1
Dashboards
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Visual tools to allow lecturers, module leaders, senior
staff and support staff to view:
» Student engagement
» Cohort comparisons
» etc…
Based on either commercial tools from Tribal (Student
Insight) or open source tools from Unicon/Marist
(OpenDashBoard)

15. Presentation and Action Layer Pt2
Student App
Specification still underdevelopment, but first
version will include:
» Overall engagement
» Comparisons
» Self declared data
» Consent management
Bespoke development by Therapy Box
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16. Presentation and Action Layer Pt 3
Alert and Intervention System
Tools to allow management of interactions with students
once risk has been identified:
» Case management
» Intervention management
» Data fed back into model
» etc…
Based on open source tools from Unicon/Marist
(Student Success Plan)
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17. Data Storage and analysis layer
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18. Open SourceCommercial
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Predictive Analytics/Machine learning
Transformations and mining
Structured Data/
Business
Intelligence
‘Big Data’ Learning Records
Store Big Data
Data storage and analysis layer overview
Presentation layer

19. Data Collection Layer
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20. Title of presentation 00/00/2013 20
Learning Records Store
About the student Activity data
TinCan
(xAPI)
ETL
Student
Record
System
LibraryVLE Others
Data collection layer overview
Data
Collection
Data
Storage
and Analysis

21. Activity data viaTin Can API
• People learn from interactions with other
people, content, and beyond.
• These actions can happen anywhere and signal
an event where learning could occur.
• When an activity needs to be recorded, the
application sends secure statements in the
form of “Actor, verb, object” or “I did this” to
the Learning Record Store (LRS.)
from: http://tincanapi.com/
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22. Activity Data (TinCan) examples
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Actor Action Object Result
Michael Accessed VLE
Sally Completed Basic MathsTest 85.0
Kim Module CommentAdded
https://registry.tincanapi.com

23. Example as JSON code
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{
"actor": {
"name": ”Michael",
"mbox": "mailto:michael.webb@jisc.ac.uk"
},
"verb": {
"id": "http://adlnet.gov/expapi/verbs/accessed",
"display": { "en-UK": ”accessed" }
},
"object": {
"id": "http://example.com/activities/vle",
"definition": {
"name": { "en-UK": ”VLE" }
}
…
Actor
Verb
Object

24. About the student’ data
Personal (demographic) data
Birthdate, gender etc.
Course data
mode of study, level etc.
Grade data
Assignment, module etc.
(aligned with HESA data)
Title of presentation 00/00/2013 24

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Jisc/Unicon
Discovery
Jisc Learning
Analytics
Implementation
Wish to
explore
readiness
and
products
Know you
are ready
and what
you want
Want to
get
involved in
tech work
first
Blackboard
Discovery
Unicon/Marist pre-
implementation
Tribal pre-
implementation
Other pre-
implementation
Blackboard
Trial
MoodleTrial
Other Learning
Analytics
Implementation
TechTrials Discovery Pre-implementation Implementatio
n

26. Jisc Learning AnalyticsToolkit
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Toolkit

27. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/code-of-practice-for-learning-analytics
First Publication: Code of Practice

28. Deeper Dive
http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5661/1/Learning_Analytics_A-_Literature_Review.pdf
Literature review – basis
for the code of practice

29. Code of Practice
Privacy
Validity
Responsibility
Access
Enabling positive
interventions
Minimising adverse impacts
Transparency and consent

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Community
Community

31. Project Blog, mailing list and
network events
Blog: http://analytics.jiscinvolve.org
Mailing: analytics@jiscmail.com:
Next event: Bradford Oct 2015
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32. michael.webb@jisc.ac.uk
One Castlepark Tower Hill Bristol BS2 0JA
T 020 3697 5800
info@jisc.ac.uk jisc.ac.uk
MichaelWebb
Director ofTechnology andAnalytics