The Innovative Research Universities Group has collaborated with the Malaysia Research University Network on four teaching and learning projects, being reported today.

One of them involved Flinders, Murdoch and Charles Darwin universities cooperating with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, developing metrics for learning analytics and investigating their application.

One finding of  the resulting report, by Deborah West, Ann Luzeckyj and Richard Price (Flinders U), plus Bill Searle (Charles Darwin U) and Danny Toohey (Murdoch U) is that university managements focus on learning analytics to address attrition, while teaching staff are interested in study specifics, for example, curriculum improvement. The authors also point to difficulties in integrating key learning and teaching data with other relevant information, such as demographics and library-use.

Overall, they argue, “a suite of reports is required to meet the needs of teaching staff across the diversity of roles and pedagogical approaches. This suite of reports needs to range from the institutional executive level, to head of school, course/program coordinator to the unit/topic coordinator, those responsible for teaching, and those responsible for curriculum design and development.”