After a fruitful collaboration between the different partners, the Erasmus+ project “Supporting Higher Education to Incorporate Learning Analytics” (SHEILA) concluded in September 2018. The project aimed to build a policy development framework that supports systematic, sustainable, and responsible adoption of learning analytics (LA) at institutional level. To this end, a series of research activities have taken place from January 2016 to September 2018 in order to investigate the current state of LA adoption in Europe, drivers for adoption, challenges, and successes to date.
The SHEILA project observed that the current state of adoption of LA among higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe was still in its early stages with few having a defined strategy or monitoring framework. However, several HEIs indicated an observation of short-term victories, such as experience-gain, cultural change, infrastructural upgrade, and a better understanding of legal and ethical implications since they started exploring LA.
Several outputs resulted from the project, including, among others:
- SHEILA research report: A comprehensive report on activities performed during the project’s duration and the results emanating from those;
- SHEILA recommendations for policy development in the field of learning analytics: A set of recommendations addressed to HEIs and policy-makers to overcome the main challenges identified during the project development;
- SHEILA policy framework: The SHEILA framework was developed based on data collected from a series of consultations with different stakeholders, including LA researchers, institutional leaders, teaching staff, and students, using interviews, focus groups, and group concept mapping methods. It can be used to support strategy and policy formation in addition to readiness assessment;
- SHEILA MOOC: The use of the SHEILA framework and how it was developed are showcased in a MOOC developed by the SHEILA project team. The three-week course also gives an overview of LA in higher education.