Learning Analytics (LA)
The Learning Analytics group is focused on piloting machine-learning based methods for early identification of students at risk of failing. The primary goal is improving retention at the OU. The main activities of the group include developing the predictive models, their implementation and deployment using the OUAnalyse dashboard and the evaluation of the impact of using the predictive analytics on teaching at the OU. Moreover, the research is focused on the development of the personalised study recommender and development of the dashboards directly focused on students. The group is constantly focusing on applying similar approaches in different educational contexts and deployed the learning analytics solution at Czech Technical University, lowering the first-year failing students by 49%. The reach was also greatly extended by publishing the world-first open learning analytics dataset OULAD, supporting the reproducible research in the community worldwide.