Learning Analytics Research Cluster

The Learning Analytics Research Cluster has developed a diversified expertise in various application domains, with the constant goal to support and study the learning processes of humans. First, optimized smart learning environments are designed to observe and capture through a variety of modalities and at several levels of granularity the learning and teaching processes that unfold within. This leads to the challenges of protecting the learners' privacy and guaranteeing the authenticity of learning experiences through the reliable and secure capture, transmission, and storage of learning data. Accumulating and connecting these big data together is however just one part of the story. Research methods also need to be adapted to the education and training sector to turn the pedagogical process into an evidence-based one, where the freedoms of individuals are preserved and the workflows of industries uninterrupted. Moreover, various forms of analytics are developed that are by nature descriptive to reconstruct learning episodes for retrospective insight, diagnostic to understand the real drivers of learning performance, predictive to foresee undesirable outcomes, and prescriptive to remedy suboptimal learning states through provision of formative feedback.