Learning Analytics' Institutional Logics: Technocratic, Managerial, and Success Logics Are Shaping Organizational Priorities and (In)Equities

• In Event: Accepting Responsibility for Shaping Equitable Learning Environments

Abstract

Through a collective case study of a state oversight agency, two large public research universities, and their technology vendors, I conducted 55 interviews to determine the institutional logics (of higher education learning analytics use. Findings indicate three dominant logics, technocratic, managerial, and success. As a sensemaking mechanism, these logics shape specific organizational responses, including changing organizational structures and technological infrastructures, reorienting organizational goals related to student learning and success, and shifting cross-organizational interactions. Further, despite the use of learning analytics to improve student and organizational outcomes, use of these technologies, informed by market, state, and national discourses, have the potential to reify organizational and individual inequities, rather than rectify them.

Author

• Carrie Klein, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association