Learning analytics stakeholders' expectations in higher education institutions: a literature review

Abstract

Purpose

The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the literature on learning analytics (LA) stakeholders' expectations to reveal the status of ongoing research in this area and to highlight gaps in research.

Design/methodology/approach

Conducting a literature review is a well-known method to establish knowledge and interpret the domain under examination (Snyder, 2019). In this paper, a descriptive approach was used to investigate the different research methods used to tackle LA stakeholders' expectations, which depends on summarising the studies' content and minimising the reviewer's interpretation.

Findings

Most of the studies have used interviews and focus groups without testing isolated variables. Moreover, it was concluded that LA awareness and perception are affected by a lack of resources, technical skills, trustworthiness, data availability, accessibility, organisational culture, integration and lack of technology. 10;This paper sheds light on research on LA stakeholders' expectations and highlights the need for investigating developing countries' context in order to test the perception and impact of LA. The study has focussed mainly on papers published in journals, which may have led to missing some previous research papers.

Originality/value

Literature review studies provide an overview of the existing LA literature from general focus to analytical methods. As it is a broad topic, this paper focuses on reviewing studies about stakeholders, which will give a fuller understanding of how their expectations are being discussed beyond the currently assumed benefits of LA.

Citation

Mahmoud, M., Dafoulas, G., Abd ElAziz, R. and Saleeb, N. (2021), "Learning analytics stakeholders' expectations in higher education institutions: a literature review", International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 33-48. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-05-2020-0081