Innovating and Disrupting Higher Education Through Learning Analytics: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Institutional Logics

• In Event: 25.086 - Sheraton Roundtable Session One - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 25.086-1 - Organizational Leadership as a Praxis for Higher Education Institutional Change

Abstract

Learning analytics (LA), or educational big data, are becoming increasingly commonplace in higher education to improve student learning and organizational functioning, despite numerous concerns and limitations related to their use. Given the increasing presence of LA data in post-secondary decision making, it is important to understand how institutions make sense of these data and whether market and state logics, via discourse and demands, are influencing that sensemaking. I conducted a critical document analysis (CDA) of documents from the implementation of a learning analytics tool at a U.S. public university system. Discourses emerged of analytics as an innovator, economic driver, and disruptor of higher education, indicating the influence of state demands and market logics into the logics of higher education organizations.

Author

• Carrie Klein, George Mason University