The ALT (Association for Learning Technology) Learning Technologist of the Year Award, established in 2007, celebrates excellent research and practice in Learning Technology. It is a national (UK) and competitive award and therefore the SHEILA project team, which includes Research Associate Dr Yi-Shan Tsai, are extremely proud to be recognised with this award.
About the SHEILA project
The SHEILA project assists European higher education institutions to become more mature users and custodians of digital data collected from students during their online learning activities. The use of learning analytics has gained increasing attention in recent years. At the same time, few higher education institutions in Europe and the world are ‘student data informed’. The SHEILA programme addresses this gap through the development of a long-term learning analytics policy agenda and a community among higher education institutions across Europe.
A series of research activities took place between January 2016 and September 2018 to investigate the state of the art in terms of learning analytics (LA) adoption in Europe, drivers for adoption, challenges, and successes to date. The project then built a policy development framework (SHEILA framework) to support systematic, sustainable and responsible adoption of LA at an institutional level. The study concluded with a recommendation of a dialogical approach to dealing with the social and cultural challenges associated with LA, so as to move towards systematic adoption under a shared vision across the institution.
The SHEILA framework offers good reference points for institutions to develop or review their strategy and policy for LA and assess their institutional readiness. The web tool of the framework together with other materials produced by the SHEILA project have been made openly accessible at: https://sheilaproject.eu/
SHEILA was funded by the European Commission via the Erasmus+ program. The SHEILA team includes partners from the University of Edinburgh, Open University of the Netherlands, Tallinn University, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Brussels Educational Services, European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education and the Erasmus Student Network.