Learning analytics in practice: setting up a laboratory for action research at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Abstract

Since its inception in 1994 as a purely online university, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has been able to position itself among the main universities of the Catalan and Spanish university systems. Most of the students at the UOC (currently more than 60,000) are adults who have a profile that could hardly fit into the traditional university system, thus finding in the UOC an opportunity to start or continue their higher education grades, in a very innovative environment. The intensive use of ICT for both the teaching/learning processes and management allows researchers and practitioners to obtain data about what takes place in the UOC Virtual Campus, which is continuously being improved according to such findings.