Seeing learning analytics tools as orchestration technologies: Towards supporting learning activities across physical and digital spaces

Abstract

© Copyright 2016 for this paper by its authors. This panel paper proposes to consider the process that learners or educators commonly follow while interacting with learning analytics tools as part of an orchestration loop. This may be particularly valuable to facilitate understanding of the key role that learning analytics may have to provide sustained support to learners and educators. The complexity of learning situations where learning occurs across varied physical spaces and multiple educational tools are involved requires a holistic and practical approach. The proposal is to build on principles of orchestration that can help link technical and theoretical aspects of learning analytics with the practitioner. The panel paper provides: 1) a brief description of the relevance of the notions of orchestration and orchestrable technologies for learning analytics; and 2) the illustration of the orchestration loop as a process followed by learners or educators when they use learning analytics tools