Designing Human-Centered Learning Analytics Dashboard for Higher Education Using a Participatory Design Approach

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are looking for new methods to assess and monitor student learning outcomes, as well as objectively determine the circumstances that contribute to their growth in different courses. Advances in new analytics tools that put visualizations and dashboards on top of live student data are making learning analytics more powerful than ever. This study utilized a participatory design (PD) technique to formulate an analytics dashboard intended for higher education. The rationale behind the study lies on the belief that an information system must be designed for users, rather than users having to accommodate a wide range of adjustments just to utilize such application. Students and teachers were recruited for their feedback and observations, respectively. After multiple PD sessions, four main crucial factors were derived: (1) who has access to data, (2) importance of time, (3) learning analytics should help students make the transition to university life, and (4) it should be discipline-specific. This study opens up a discussion on the importance of human-centered design through the use of PD and how learning analytics dashboard can be maximized to its potential when deployed in the academe.