Visualising WIL: using data to support transformative learning

Learning analytics provides tools that enable and require learners to engage in new kinds of learning practices, including the interpretation and critical analysis of data representations. Given that analytics are now commonplace in organisational practice, our students need opportunities to develop expertise in, and a critical perspective on, analytics tools. Working with students in two PACE (Professional and Community Engagement) units at Macquarie University, we are developing a model for engaging students in visualising aspects of their work integrated learning. The model makes use of simple and readily available analytics, and is designed to facilitate transformative learning, building students’ capacity to learn from their experience of professional or community engagement through the use of visual tools. We report on our pilot project that involves supporting students in developing and reflecting on tools and strategies for imagining, mapping, observing and re-imagining key domains of work integrated learning within the scope of a unit of study. The project aims to produce a scalable model that has application across different disciplines. It is informed by recent literature on embedded learning analytics (Pardo, 2014), the alignment of learning analytics with learning design (Lockyer, Heathcote & Dawson, 2013), and data capture and representation (Pardo, 2014).