The effects of learning analytics empowered technology on the students' arithmetic skills learning

Learning analytics empowered educational technologies (LA-ET) in primary classrooms lead to blended learning scenarios with teacher lead instruction, class paced and individually paced practice. Learning analytics may function as a bridge between class and individual paced activities to support educational effectiveness. This quasi-experimental study investigates the effects of a LA-ET on the development of students' arithmetic skills over one school year. Children learning in a traditional paper based setting are compared to learners using a LA-ET on tablet computers in grade 4. The educational technology combines teacher dashboards (extracted analytics) and class and individually paced assignments (embedded analytics). The results indicate that children in the LA-ET condition make more progress on arithmetic skills. This study showed that educational technologies combining extracted and embedded learning analytics create new education scenarios, which contributed to increased development in primary education. However, the large variation in usage application of practice does stress the need for advanced efforts to balance embedded analytics and extracted analytics, in such a way that system strengths and human strengths together optimally support personalized learning.