I hate writing policy. I agonise over the words that feel so important at the time and know damn well that almost no-one’s going to read it. But imperfect as it is, it’s a framework/agreed set of standards that we can work towards.

This piece is a work in progress, a public draft if you will.

Early in the process of developing learning analytics we wrote a policy for the ethical use of learning analytics (section 8), but we’ve realised that this policy is primarily ethical and aspirational. We are missing some dull, but essential, operational content.

Over the next few months we will write an addendum describing:

• The importance of upstream data
• Consideration by owners of its eventual appearance in Dashboard

• Who is responsible for ensuring relevant staff have access to the dashboard

• Who is responsible for mapping tutors to students
• How each school will use the data to support students
• – individual student engagement
• – alerts for individual students
• – periodic communication to students (often mid term reviews)
• – data reports
• In each school who is responsible for responding to alerts (usually tutors)
• In each school who is responsible for monitoring student engagement
• How alerts/early warnings are to be integrated into existing support mechanisms
• Who is responsible for making referrals to specialist support
• Keeping notes in the Dashboard for future referral

What’s missing?

Some extra help

The SHEILA project has collected together a selection of learning analytics policies for anyone who’d like to embark on a similar quest.