About LALA

About LALA

Objetives

General

  1. To improve the quality, efficiency and relevance of Higher Education in Latin America, building local capacities to design, adapt, implement and adopt Learning Analytics tools to improve academic decision making processes.

Specific

  1. To develop a framework that describes the methodological, technical, institutional, ethical and communal aspects of the deployment of Learning Analytics in the context of Latin American Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
  2. To adapt two existing tools created originally in the context of Europe to the Latin American context. One will be directed to academic administrators and the other, to professors and counselors.
  3. To develop the LALA Handbook, a guide containing the LALA Methodology, the infrastructure, recommendation and the adoption experiences and best-practices gained during the pilot.

General Description

A large amount of data is being produced by the academic systems (Registration, Learning Management Systems, Library, etc.). This data is usually just stored, but it is not used in any meaningful way. This data, though correct processes of analysis and reporting, could be used to improve the decision making inside academic institutions.

The field of Learning Analytics and Academic Analytics has developed considerably during the last year in European HEIs. Through the use of Learning Analytics tools, the management of Universities and Academic programs in Europe has been modernized. In Latin American, there is a lack of local capacity to design and build this specialized tools that could be used to improve HEIs administration.

Currently, most decisions in the academic settings in Latin America HEIs are based on preconceptions or feelings. If data is used, it is in the form of database reports that only provide the most basic level of information. Due to the last decade modernization of academic systems, in most Latin America HEIs there is a large amount of data being produced every day, but this data is usually ignored. This project seeks to modernize the academic decision making process through building local capacity to create Learning Analytics to support decision makers at different levels in Latin American HEIs.

This project fits the priorities set for Latin American inside the Erasmus Plus project call for Capacity Building, and particularly “Improving management and operation of higher educational Institutions” and “Quality Assurance processes and mechanisms”, since this project seeks to build local capacity in Latin American HEIs to design and implement Learning Analytic tools.