Preface to the Workshop Proceedings The Workshop on Adoption, Adaptation and Pilots of Learning Analytics in Underrepresented regions took place online due to the coronavirus outbreak. This workshop is one of the workshops of the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2020 (EC-TEL). The workshop is organized by LALA project (www.lalaproject.org) members, an European Union funded project for building capacity of learning analytics in Latin America, with special emphasis is Chile and Ecuador. Learning analytics research has made a notable progress in the last decade. However, not all the regions are using and/or researching learning analytics at the same level.
Regions such as North America, Europe or Australia have developed learning analytics
in a considerable way. However, in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Asia,
there is a need to build local capacity to use learning analytics. In this context, the
application of learning analytics e.g. in Latin America represents a great opportunity
(Ochoa, 2019). LA was with low development in South África (Lemmens & Henns,
2016) or is progressing in Asia
At present, the interest of the application of learning analytics in many of the underrepresented regions is increasing. Proof of that growing interest is e.g. the publication of a special issue on learning analytics adoption in Latin America of British Journal of Educational Technology (Pontual Falcão, Ferreira, Rodrigues, 2019). There are also other regions where the application of learning analytics represents a great opportunity.
From an institutional point of view, there is a need to analyse how learning analytics can be adopted in higher education institutions (HEIs) taking into account the contextual particularities of the region regarding culture, privacy, ethics, policies or technical infrastructure. In addition, there is a need to adapt different learning analytics tools and researches to meet the needs in the local contexts, rather than treating learning analytics as generalizable solutions.
As an example, the LALA project
This workshop has three main objectives: 1) Disseminate the results of the LALA project, helping Latin American institutions to turn into data-driven solutions for education. 2) Share experiences of learning analytics and help other institutions to adopt learning analytics tools and services, and 3) Extend the community of learning analytics in under-represented regions.
The workshop had an open call for papers, and each submitted paper was reviewed by at least two members of the program committee. A total of five papers were accepted. In addition, an invited paper by the workshop co-organizers is also included in the proceedings. The six papers included in the proceedings are the following: • • “A general overview of the LALA project”. This is the invited paper by the co-organizers and it includes the main objectives and the main outcomes of the LALA project so far. “Learning Analytics at UC-Engineering: Lessons learned about Infrastructure and Organizational Structure”. This paper presents two initiatives, one top-down (leaded by institutional managers) and another bottom-up (leaded by ground-level teaching staff), that the School of Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile conducted for designing learning analytics solutions adapted to their needs. How the two initiatives emerged and how they were integrated into existing academic processes are discussed. “Applying the LALA Framework for the adoption of a Learning Analytic tool in Latin America: Two case studies in Ecuador”. This paper presents the results obtained with the application of the LALA Framework for the development and adoption of LA tools in two Latin-American HEIs with different LA contexts. This work not only shows the feasibility of this framework but also shows that different LA context requires the execution of activities applying different approaches. The paper also proposes changes to improve the LALA Framework. “A Student-oriented Tool to Support Course Selection in Academic Counseling Sessions”. This paper presents a tool that allows students to select multiple courses and predict their academic performance based on historical academic data. The tool is intended to be used prior to counseling sessions in which students plan their upcoming semester. This paper presents the tool's design and implementation and discusses its potential to improve the student-counselor discourse. “Modeling Trajectories to Understand the Delayed Completion of Sequential Curricula Undergraduate Programs”. This paper presents an analysis of academic delay of students. “An Early warning dropout model in higher education degrees: A Case Study in Ecuador”. This paper presents a new predictive model that can identify the earliest moment of dropping out of a student of any semester in any undergraduate course. The model developed and the variables used in the predictive model are presented based on a case study from a public High Education Institution in Ecuador.
Program Committee
Jon Imaz Marín, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Julio Guerra, Universidad Austral de Chile Alberto Jiméneez, Escuela Politécnica Superior del Litoral
Lorena Siguenza-Guzmán, Universidad de Cuenca Acknowledgements Work partially funded by the LALA project (grant no. 586120-EPP-1-2017-1-ESEPPKA2-CBHE-JP). The LALA project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the European Commission and the EACEA agency cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.