Abstract:

The paper offers research into the most challenging aspects of applying Learning analytics (LA) in higher education. Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs. This is an innovative extra-interdisciplinary area referring to Digital Humanities. The roots of the field is deeply connected with statistics, text-mining, social-network analysis, machine learning, human-computer interaction, learning sciences, and educational cognitive and social psychology. This area is an innovation at a global level is is still developing its standards, codes, risks and ethical codes and policies. In the context of global trends and implementation of such techniques as machine-learning, data analysis there is a shift to the application of sophisticated technologies in the area of humanities and the development of the area called Digital Humanities. This allows to increase the efficiency and practical aspect in humanities. Higher education today is a source of the huge volume of data - learning data, demographic and institutional data and etc. Digital traces left after the interaction of students, teachers and other stakeholders with the computerized systems are useful source of analysis for the purposes of prediction, intervention, evidence-based decision making on most adequate instructing methods, professional development programs for staff, effective allocation of resources and etc. The paper focuses on identifying the main challenges - technological, educational, ethical - the Learning Analytics is facing today. There are number of efficient applications for educational data analysis however the conservative character of the system of education as well as the ethical issues prevent Learning analytics from being widely applied. After studying the international experience of applying LA in higher educational institutions around the world it was identified that there 3 countries where LA is being used as a tool for predictive purposes - the USA, Australia, and the UK. The results of the research demonstrate that the challenges today are mostly connected with storage, consent, data security, ethics, data literacy, and policies. The results of the research provide a complex overview of the LA paradigm in contemporary higher education.

Keywords:

Learning analytics, digital humanities, data, ethics.