Impact: A Learning Analytics Perspective

[LACteam]

 

What's In It For Me? 

Ever thought about how your LMS team goes about making decisions for processes and tool integration? Whether you're already using data-informed methods or thinking about giving it a try, you might want to peek at what Impact and our Strategic Learning Analytics services have to offer. This article breaks down the awesome perks you can score with Impact to reach your goals for change. Plus, it throws in a handy framework and extra support options that could be exactly what your team needs.

What is Learning Analytics?

Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learning in order to understand and optimize learning and learning's impact on an organization's performance. There are three main learning analytics categories: Learning Experience Analytics, Learner Analytics, Learning Program Analytics.

The primary goals of learning analytics are:

• Enhance Learning Outcomes
• Optimize Instructional Design
• Improve Learner Engagement
• Personalize Learning
• Support Decision-Making

 Impact supports all of these, some directly and others indirectly. Read on to learn more about each!

What does Impact support directly?

So first of all, it is important to understand that Impact is a tool that deepens and accelerates the adoption of your LMS and integrated tools. Impact assists users in accomplishing this in three main ways: proactive messaging, support, and insights. 

Impact does support learning experience analytics use cases that seek to gain a deeper understanding of a specific activity or experience. 

Impact can help answer...

• What are usage patterns for specific activities?
• Is there interaction with the experiences that have been created?
• Are there any common challenges or issues reported by learners?

It also supports some learner analytics which are a collection of data related to what learners or groups of learners are doing, but not necessarily how they are doing in terms of achievement and growth. This is because there are no scores (grades, assessments, etc) in Impact. Learner analytics represents some of the most commonly asked questions of learner analytics, such as who's done what?

Impact can help answer...

• How frequently are learners accessing the LMS?
• How are learners navigating through the course content?
• Are learners following a linear progression through the courses, or are they exploring non-linear pathways?
• Which external resources or tools integrated with the LMS are most frequently used by learners?
• Are learners completing the assigned activities and assessments?

How does Impact support ed-tech adoption?

Impact is installed in Canvas, your LMS, and provides messaging, data, and support tools that can target specific groups of users in real time to deepen and accelerate adoption of processes, practices, features, and integrated tools.

Messaging

There are several messaging features found within Impact that allow administrators to proactively target their users in order to bring awareness and/or reinforce processes within Canvas/LMS. 

Support 

The second pillar, the Impact Support Center, helps to foster a culture of self-help by offering contextualized, in-line support that users have immediate access to. Impact recognizes both the user’s role and page location within Canvas in order to recommend relevant Canvas Guides from the Instructure Community. 

Insights

The final pillar of Impact is Insights. Utilizing hotspots in the Canvas UI, Impact is able to gather click data. There are several reports in the dashboard that allow administrators and educators to get both high-level and very granular adoption data, as well as take immediate action to support their users in the different areas of Canvas. The Insights available can be leveraged to help make informed decisions regarding an institution’s adoption of Canvas and third party tools.  

Institutions around the world have leveraged Impact in many different ways, and here are just a few examples of the common use cases we have encountered as consultants working with customers. 

What are some things Impact supports indirectly?

We believe having Impact is like having another very valuable member on your team. When used with intention, it can help you accomplish targeted, responsive, and differentiated tasks. However, there are some things that Impact supports less directly that you should be aware of. These limitations are based on the types of data Impact collects how Impact collects that data.

Understanding Types of Data Collected

Impact does not collect/provide academic or demographic data for things like subpopulations, grades, or assessments. This means that users should not expect to be able to answer questions aligned to learning program analytics solely within Impact. However, in some cases, there are opportunities to combine data from Impact with other data sources outside of Impact if you are seeking to blend and triangulate multiple data sources to see correlations that can assist in learning program analytics.

Understanding How Data is Collected

Impact uses hot spots, or contexts, to place monitors and contexts. It does not provide data that indicates if a user has settings configured prior to the installation of Impact or if the user received preset configurations. Activity monitors placed on a page or element will capture if the user has visited a page or clicked an element. If settings are configured and pushed through a template and/or blueprint, Impact will not surface any creation activity associated with the original creation of that content. However, it is possible to monitor some actions once the user is using that content. 

Instructure Success Model + Impact

At Instructure, we believe adoption success comes from intentional and strategic design framed in strong change theory fueled by data and evidence that inform decision making. We call this framework the Instructure Success Model. Impact Learning Analytics Consultants apply this model when delivering consulting during and beyond implementation. Take a look at a few ways in which Impact supports adoption in each step of the model.

Impact Insights collected with monitors and reporting templates provide data that allows leaders to quickly ASSESS what users are doing and where they are doing it in Canvas and integrated tools with the goal of increasing quality. 

Using Impact data, leaders and educators can PLAN on strategies to deliver contextualized content that can be added to messaging.

Content in the form of Messages, Campaigns, Walkthroughs, and Support Articles can be launched/EXECUTE to target users with the goal of changing or reinforcing best practice behaviors.

After plans have been executed, Impact provides data that allows leaders to quickly ASSESS or judge the quality of those actions to see if target audience behaviors were reinforced or changed toward desired outcomes. 

Interested in Learning More about Impact and Learning Analytics Consulting? 

We'd love to be a strategic thought partner and another set of hands to support all of the various needs associated with Canvas and integrated tools across your organization. Our Learning Analytics Consultant solutions can help move your team from your current state to your desired future state. We’d love to help your organization achieve success with your teaching and learning vision and goals! Please reach out to us at ls_learninganalytics@instructure.com. Also, check out our menu of learning analytics service offerings for Impact.