An article appeared in the Times Higher Education online magazine recently (April 3, 2014) under the heading “More data can lead to poor student choices, Hefce [Higher Education Funding Council for England] learns”. The article was not about learning analytics, but about the data provided to prospective students with the aim of supporting their choice of Higher Education provider (HEp). The data is accessible via the Unistats web site, and includes various statistics on the cost of living, fees, student satisfaction, teaching hours, and employment prospects. In principle, this sounds like a good idea; I believe students are genuinely interested in these aspects, and the government and funding council see the provision of this information as a means of driving performance up and costs down. So, although this is not about learning analytics, there are several features in common: the stakeholders involved, the idea of choice informed by statistics, and the idea of shifting a cost-benefit balance for identified measures of interest.
For the rest of this article, which I originally published as “More Data Can Lead to Poor Student Choices”, please visit the LACE Project website.