Understanding our Analytics: A Visualization Survey

Abstract

Visualization is already a part of Learning Analytics, used to convey or clarify observations of and patterns from the data. We examine what types of visualizations and supporting features are included in commercial and academic analytics solutions. From this comparison, we find that there is another academic field, Information Visualization, that can be brought to bear on Learning Analytics. By introducing these new techniques and theory, we must make a determination on visualization approach in analytics; exploratory or targeted, informed solutions based on sound pedagogical input. Our analysis suggests that investigating applying Information Visualization would be a worthy area of endeavour.