Largely through the hard work and enthusiasm of Harald Åge Sæthre I know that colleagues in Norwegian universities have invested considerable time thinking about the issues of helping students cope with the transition into the first year. One outcome of this work is the Kompetansenettverk for Studenters Suksess I Høyere Utdanning (competence network for students’ success in higher education). I was lucky enough to be invited to talk about some of the contemporary issues associated with learning analytics.

I took the themes of the relationship between student engagement and success, implementing learning analytics and some of the pedagogical, ethical and organisational issues learned from our ABLE and OfLA Erasmus+ Projects.

At the time of writing, we were just entering a state of high anxiety about how serious the Omicron variant of the covid-19 pandemic was going to be, so the event took place online. (Ho hum). But the participants were enthusiastic with plenty of really good questions. And to the person who asked – “Is there AI in learning analytics?” I think what I should have said was – “Yes (sort of). Lots of people are using it in algorithms (with all the concerns we have about hidden biases and unintended consequences etc.), and I’m sure it’s being considered in many areas of diagnosis and early warning, but I think we’re a way off implementing systems where AI offers advice to students about what to do next.”

Slides below – apologies for the large file size