Low-Investment, Realistic-Return Business Cases for Learning Analytics Dashboards: Leveraging Usage Data and Microinteractions

In recent years, Learning Analytics (LA) is finding more and more practical adoption, alongside of continued research interest. However, questions about the impact of LA applications and their underpinning in educational science are still being raised, impeding viability of some LA projects at larger scale. Within this paper we describe two examples using student-facing LA dashboards (LAD) deployed at scale at a relatively low cost. Leveraging data collected by the dashboards themselves, usage data (N = 4070 students) and in-dashboard microinteractions (N = 367 students), we try to put the impact question in perspective. We suggest that when investment is kept limited, a business case with modest but realistic expatiations of returns may be feasible.