School inspections are a common feature of many education systems. These may be informed by quantitative background data about schools. It is recognised that there are pros and cons of using such quantitative information as part of the inspection process, though these have rarely been succinctly set out. This paper seeks to fill this gap by…

The digitalisation and datafication of education has raised profound questions about the changing role of teachers' educational expertise and agency, as automated processes, data-driven analytics and accountability regimes produce new forms of knowledge and governance. Increasingly, research is paying greater attention to the significant role of…

Each year, when GCSE and A level results are published, a common talking point in media coverage is how results of male and female students differ. This reflects a popular fascination with such differences, but there is also a deeper, longstanding research interest in sex differences in education, not just in England, but around the world.…

Many studies have found a relationship between students' self-reported procrastination and their grades. Few studies have used learning analytic data as a behavioural measure of procrastination in order to predict performance, and there is no systematic research on how this relationship may differ across assessments or disciplines. In this study…

Universities are now compelled to attend to metrics that (re)shape our conceptualisation of the student experience. New technologies such as learning analytics (LA) promise the ability to target personalised support to profiled 'at risk' students through mapping large-scale historic student engagement data such as attendance, library use, and…

In this paper, we propose the Social Semantic Server (SSS) as a service-based infrastructure for workplace and professional learning analytics (LA). The design and development of the SSS have evolved over eight years, starting with an analysis of workplace learning inspired by knowledge creation theories and their application in different…

The English further education (FE) sector caters for young learners who are regularly defined as at risk due to a range of economic and social challenges, as transitions from youth to adulthood become more protracted, and inequalities amongst young people and between generations persist and deepen. At a time when policy places increasing…

The implementation of learning analytics may empower distance learning institutions to provide real-time feedback to students and teachers. Given the leading role of the Open University UK (OU) in research and application of learning analytics, this study aims to share the lessons learned from the experiences of 42 participants from a range of…

A rapid, exploratory review to establish a shared understanding of what constitutes good quality EdTech and implementation. The review: (1) examined existing frameworks and standards; and (2) identified the characteristics, quality components, essential conditions and evaluation criteria for the design and implementation of EdTech. The report…

The recent shift in compulsory education from ICT-focused computing curricula to informatics, digital literacy and computer science, has resulted in children being taught computing using block-based programming tools such as Scratch, with teaching that is often limited by school resources and teacher expertise. Even without these limitations,…