Learning Analytics 2.0: From One-Off Analyses to a Shared Service
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Learning Analytics 2.0
Student success analytics shouldn’t depend on whether your college happens to have an analytics team.
In 2020–21, at Michigan State University’s Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, I worked on what we called Learning Analytics 2.0: moving student success analysis from one-off, unit-by-unit projects to a shared, campus-wide service. One piece, theHUB, reached working form and is openly available. USOAR was written while The Hub was still operating. iSAAS was designed there and submitted in spring 2022 through the academic strategic plan process, after The Hub had closed (summer 2021). Neither moved past early development. Each is labeled below so you know which is which.
| Project | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| theHUB | Open-source R toolkit for student outcomes and survey analysis | Built and shared |
| iSAAS | In-semester early identification of students needing academic support | Designed and proposed |
| USOAR | A common set of student success reports for every college and department | Designed and proposed |
The Problem: An Analytics Chasm
Several academic units run their own student outcomes and success programs using their own analyses. Some have dedicated analysts; many do not. The result is a widening gap between analytics haves and have-nots, with the same questions answered at different depths, with different definitions, from different data pulls. Meanwhile, students in academic trouble were typically identified the semester after the trouble, when the options are narrower.
Learning Analytics 2.0 was a bet that a central team could close that gap without replacing the units’ own student success groups and without turning analytics into a ranking of units.
theHUB: The Part That Shipped
theHUB is the toolkit that grew out of this work: functions, scripts, notebooks, and worked examples for analyzing student outcomes, student success, and survey responses. It was built to be shared across the university rather than kept inside one office. It is the working foundation that the two proposals below were meant to build on, and it is still available at thehopefulbox.com.
iSAAS: In-Semester Analysis Aiding/Assisting Students
Status: designed and proposed; one instructor was interested in piloting early versions, but it never happened. Did not progress beyond initial development.
The idea. Use what a student is already doing in a course (attendance, homework, assessments) to flag who needs help while there is still time to act, starting as early as week three.
The gap it targeted. The existing early-alert process depended on instructors building each report by hand, about twice a semester. That is time-consuming for anyone, and especially for instructors of large gateway courses.
The design.
- iSAAS connects to the learning management system (at MSU it is D2L) and runs the analysis.
- Every student gets a customized, encouraging message about where they stand. A short start-of-semester questionnaire tailors the tone of the nudges.
- The instructor gets a class-level summary (report, slides, workbook) plus a correctly formatted file ready to load into the existing early-alert system, so iSAAS augments the process rather than replacing it.
- Launch scope: large-enrollment first- and second-year gateway courses, built for the university’s LMS but designed to adapt to other gradebook formats.
USOAR: Unified Student Success and Outcomes Analysis Reports
Status: designed and proposed; did not progress beyond initial development.
The idea. One common set of student- and unit-level reports available to every college and department, so units can stop rebuilding the same analyses and spend their effort on questions specific to them. The design was informed by informal conversations with a few colleges before the proposal was written.
The design. A consortium of student success leaders from across campus would share ideas, flag common difficulties, and propose new analyses, while The Hub ran the meetings, prioritized and built the analyses, and distributed the results. The intended benefits:
- The same metrics and analyses available to every unit
- Student success groups freed to pursue novel, unit-specific work
- New metrics vetted once and shared with everyone
- Consolidated data pulls
- A common student outcomes lexicon
The plan. Three aims over twelve months:
- Investigate (2 months; not formally started): learn what each college already analyzes and wants to know, starting with at least six colleges.
- Design USOAR v1.0 (4 months): identify the common analyses, define the required data, design the reports, and choose the delivery tools.
- Implement (6 months): build the interface for colleges and departments to use and explore.
What This Work Shows
Neither proposal got built, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. What they show is how I work: find a structural gap, define who it affects, design a service that fits the way people already operate, scope it with milestones, and build the part that can be built now. theHUB is the evidence that the last step happened.
The Thread That Continues
The analytics gap described above is the same one behind exeResearch’s enrollment work: institutions that need predictive analytics but don’t have an analytics department. The same design instincts carry into sports, where the problems are familiar: a shared definition of key metrics across scouting, performance, and coaching groups, consolidated data pulls instead of everyone’s private spreadsheets, and in-season early warning rather than end-of-season autopsies.