Leveraging learning analytics: Assessing the use and impact of a learner profile dashboard for university staff

<p dir="ltr">This evolving project investigates the development, implementation, and adoption of a learner profile dashboard that provide aggregated insights of learner demographics and risk levels of incoming learners every trimester. A dashboard was designed and developed for use by university staff of the competency based education (CBE) programmes of a Singapore-based university. They provide insights to answer these three questions: Who are we enrolling?, Why do they enroll?, and What is their level of readiness? The university staff were either involved in programme management (e.g. Director of programme, programme lead), teaching (e.g. Micro-credential lead, competency unit lead, other instructors/lecturers of the competency unit), or academic support (i.e. Success coaches, educational developers). Given the diverse demographics (e.g. age, industry experience, and completion timelines) of learners in the CBE programmes, and considering that all learners hold full-time employment, it is important for faculty to understand the profiles of incoming learners. This awareness is thought to enable university staff to tailor teaching strategies or provide accommodations, if necessary, to support the specific needs of the cohort. However, providing learning analytics dashboards to stakeholders in a meaningful way that leads to actionable insights is a complex endeavour (Schwendimann et al., 2017). In other words, simply providing stakeholders with dashboards does not necessarily ensure their effective use or adoption in practice. To support engagement with the dashboard, a concise 1-minute instructional video demonstrating how to navigate the dashboard and utilise its features was introduced. Additional short videos to explain the rationale behind concepts relating to learners readiness for university are in development. Furthermore, a collaboration channel will be introduced to serve as a community of practice, to encourage peer learning and the exchange of ideas or use cases of the dashboards. Beyond implementation, this study seeks to explore university staff perceptions of the dashboard to assess their impact and inform future dashboard development. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study employs a survey questionnaire grounded in a framework evaluating impact across six domains desirability, efficacy, equity, usability, affective response, and consistency as well as the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989). Data collection is currently in progress, and findings will be presented at the conference upon acceptance. This research has the potential to offer practical insights into the process of designing and implementing dashboards that are both usable and beneficial for university staff, ultimately enhancing their ability to make data-informed decisions in CBE programmes.</p>