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community Culture digital culture Digital Education digital leadership Digital Responsibility ethics identity Online Safety Policy Social Media Toxicity Well-being

Toxicity and Responsibility: Is it time to reassess institutional engagement with Twitter (X)

About a year ago I  left Twitter (or X), a decision based on concerns about the platform’s increasingly toxic environment. The decision was right, and […]

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Assessment data Learning Analytics Service Mental Health Policy

Notes and presentations from the 13th Learning Analytics Network meeting at the University of Edinburgh

Our latest UK Learning Analytics Network meeting was kindly hosted by the University of Edinburgh. Sessions varied from details of the range of innovations Edinburgh is involved with, to using assessment data, to student wellbeing and mental health, to current developments with Civitas Learning’s products and Jisc’s learning analytics service. The hashtag was #jisclan if …

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Policy Trends

Trends Unpacked: Organizational Challenges and Learning Analytics (Part 4)

This is a guest post by Lindsay Pineda and Patrick Lynch. Their bios are at the end of the article. What organizational challenges have you identified at your institution in regards to implementing learning analytics? Do you wonder if they are they similar to those of other institutions? Do you worry that you are alone …

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Consent Service Intervention Legal Issues Policy

Consent and the GDPR: what approaches are universities taking?

We’ve already published some practical guidance for institutions on how to interpret and apply the new EU legislation – the General Data Protection Regulation – with regards to requesting student consent for the use of their data for learning analytics. We suggested that institutions should: Not ask for consent for the use of non-sensitive data for analytics (our …

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Policy

Trends Unpacked (Part 3): Technical Challenges and Learning Analytics

This is a guest post from Lindsay Pineda, Senior Implementation Consultant and Amanda Mason, Senior Business Analyst, Unicon, Inc. How are you approaching a learning analytics implementation at your institution? Is the impression that it is mostly a technical implementation? Or is it mostly an organizational/cultural one? As we discuss in this installment of the …

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co-design Legal Issues Policy

Second pathfinder meeting: addressing common institutional challenges

At our recent pathfinder meeting, a number of institutions involved in implementing Jisc’s learning analytics architecture came together to work on issues of common concern. This followed a get together in Bristol last December where we looked at institutional culture, ethical & legal issues and data. Participants from the different universities present discussed a different range …

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Consent Service ethics Legal Issues Policy

Consent for learning analytics: some practical guidance for institutions

What information do students need about the use of their data for learning analytics? When should students be asked for their consent for this? How is it best to obtain that consent? What happens if a student wishes to opt out? Consent continues to be one of the main concerns for universities and colleges when …

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accessibility ethics Legal Issues Policy

Accessibility considerations for learning analytics

Enshrined in our Code of Practice for Learning Analytics is the principle that learning analytics should be for the benefit of students. It’s important for ethical and legal reasons to ensure that students with special needs are able to benefit equally from the technologies, and are not put at a disadvantage by the collection and use of …

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Code of Practice ethics Legal Issues Policy

Institutions working together to address learning analytics deployment issues

Last Friday, representatives from a number of early adopter universities came together at Jisc’s Bristol offices to work on some of the areas that need to be tackled in their institutional learning analytics projects. Jisc’s Director of Data and Analytics, Michael Webb, demonstrated a new Data Explorer tool which provides useful visualisations, enabling institutions to …

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Code of Practice Legal Issues Policy

Developing an institutional learning analytics policy

Institutions that are rolling out learning analytics projects will have to address a range of new and often complex issues. This is likely to mean developing an institutional policy specifically to address these issues or adapting existing policies. Jisc’s Code of Practice for Learning Analytics provides a checklist of the areas which may need to be handled …