Beyond the Numbers: Socio-Cultural Context as a Frame for Learning Analytics

Socio-cultural context influences how learners engage with, experience, and make sense of learning. As such, Learning Analytics systems must intentionally account for this context in their design and interpretation. While many researchers in the field are already addressing these issues, sometimes implicitly or under different frameworks, we argue for a more unified focus on socio-cultural context as a guiding construct. Drawing on scholarship from education, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, we define sociocultural context in terms of power, norms, and identity. Through two case studies of our own work on collaboration and engagement analytics, we illustrate how overlooking socio-cultural context can lead to incomplete systems that do not account for the variety of ways students might show up in learning spaces. We build on existing work and propose socio-cultural context as an organizing lens for future research. Doing so enables interdisciplinary collaboration and design that ultimately ensures analytics better serves learners.