Learning Analytics Made in France: The METALproject

TL;DR

The METAL project is a comprehensive French initiative that integrates data management, visualization, and exploitation to enhance learning analytics in secondary education, emphasizing user-centered design and ethical considerations.

Contribution

It introduces a holistic approach to Learning Analytics implementation, combining multi-source data handling, co-designed visualizations, and explainable algorithms at an institutional scale.

Findings

Development of an open-source Learning Record Store (LRS)

Design of user-trusted dashboards through co-conception

Exploration of gaze-memory links and privacy-aware data-mining algorithms

Abstract

This paper presents the METAL project, an ongoing French open Learning Analytics (LA) project for secondary school, that aims at improving the quality of the learning process. The originality of METAL is that it relies on research through exploratory activities and focuses on all the aspects of a Learning Analytics implementation. This large-scale project includes many concerns, divided into 4 main actions. (1) data management: multi-source data identification, collection and storage, selection and promotion of standards, and design and development of an open-source Learning Record Store (LRS); (2) data visualization: learner and teacher dashboards, with a design that relies on the co-conception with final users, including trust and usability concerns; (3) data exploitation: study of the link between gaze and memory of learners, design of explainable multi-source data-mining algorithms, including ethics and privacy concerns. An additional key of originality lies in the global dissemination of LA at an institution level or at a broader level such as a territory, at the opposite on many projects that focus on a specific school or a school curriculum. Each of these aspects is a hot topic in the literature. Taking into account all of them in a holistic view of education is an additional added value of the project.