Abstract:

Over the last few years learning analytics has emerged as a significant area of investigation in relation to learner profiling, improving learning outcomes and identifying learners at risk of exclusion or failure. Given the emergence of big data from a business context much of the research on learning analytics to date has focused on quantitative studies and the potential of summative test data to predict learner behaviour in the future. Moreover, analytics has often been perceived as a tool for institutions, administrators or instructors to track learners rather than as a tool to empower learners or to inform sound pedagogy. This paper aims to critically examine the challenges and opportunities presented by learning analytics and in particular social learning analytics in the context of online language learning where few studies have yet to emerge. The paper considers the ethical and research implications of the attempt to harness big data in language learning contexts and examine in particular the role that social learning analytics can play in tracing the development of language learning as a summative process based on interaction and dialogue.

Keywords:

Learning analytics, language learning, social learning, big data, tracking.