Credit Hours: 3
Instructional Mode: Online & Asynchronous
Student Collaboration: Asynchronous collaborative text annotation, and peer reviews for long-term project
Faculty Designer: Maria Widmer, UW-Madison MERIT Instructional Designer
Instructor: Dr. Padraig Nash, Director of Learning Science and Learning Design at Udemy
“I am truly loving my courses this semester. I feel like I released a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding and found something I really care about and enjoy. I am infinitely grateful for those feelings and just wanted to share. I can’t say enough good things.”
Dani Creasey, Office of the Registrar at UW-Madison, class of 2024
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EdPsych 575: Instructional Design for Learning Analytics explores the theoretical foundations and practical use of learning analytics for instructional design. The course assignments prepare students for professional practice with hands-on experience designing learning environments modeled to predict success and retention. It focuses on understanding the ways in which learning analytics can be used to develop experiences and environments that support strategic learning outcomes. Students will:
- Apply a variety of models to learning experience design problems.
- Evaluate and select learning analytics tools and methods to answer pedagogical questions.
- Iteratively improve learning design and facilitation practices using learning analytics data.
- Discuss practices, issues, challenges, and opportunities surrounding the use of learning analytics in instructional design.
Why this course?
Learning environments create immense amounts of data. How can that data be used to inform teaching practices and improve learning outcomes? This course hinges learning analytics with instructional design so that students can learn how to proactively and retroactively implement learning analytics to create a richer learning environment.
How do students learn in 575?
Students engage with short (10-15 minute) video lectures, critique learning analytics tools and dashboards, and engage in a scaffolded Design Lab project that builds each week towards creating a learning environment of their choosing.
Schedule of Topics
| Week | Topic |
| 1 | The Design Way |
| 2 | Learning Design |
| 3 | Analyze: Needs Assessment |
| 4 | Analyze: Goals Analysis |
| 5 | Analyze: Skill Analysis |
| 6 | Analyze: Context & Stakeholder Analysis |
| 7 | Analyze: Preparing for Design |
| 8 | Design: Assessment Strategy |
| 9 | Design: Learning Experiences |
| 10 | Develop: Instructional Materials |
| 11 | Develop: Data Collection & Analytics |
| 12 | Implement: Formative Evaluations |
| 13 | Evaluate: Revisions |
| 14 | Evaluate: Reflections |
What students say
“The course is designed to be applied in the real world, which is fantastic.”
Student end-of-course evaluation, fall 2023
Instructor Insights
“This is a class about designing quality learning experiences. One of the most exciting things about learning about instructional design in the context of a learning analytics program is that we get to really think deeply about how learning analytics can help us develop not only better sources of data that can then improve the experience for current and future learners, but that those sources of data do not need to be traditional assessment activities, and can instead be embedded within the authentic learning experiences. And, students get to do it in an applied way, designing a learning experience that relies on learning analytics over the course of the semester.” – Dr. Padraig Nash
Sample Week
Materials including videos, assignments, and readings will be available at the beginning of each week. Below is a suggested guideline for spacing out assignments in order to provide enough time for work, interactions with the instructors, students, and student group, etc. While the rhythm may change depending on the week, students can generally expect to engage with course materials and each other in this way and thus may plan accordingly. Note the purposeful balance between individual and group assignments. Below is a sample from Week 4 of this course:
| Week 4: | Analyze: Goal Analysis | ||||||
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Learning Objectives | |||||||
| Core Reading(s) | Suskie (2018); Dick, Carey & Carey, (2021) | ||||||
| Annotations | Post questions and respond to peers by Thurs pm | ||||||
| Analytics Lens | Critique and submit by Mon pm | ||||||
| Design Lab | Respond to Design Lab questions by Mon pm | ||||||
What More Students are Saying:
I greatly enjoyed the structure of this course and its alignment with designing our own learning experience throughout the semester. Each week taught us a knew skill in instructional design, and then immediately had us put that skill to practice by applying it to our own modules we were designing – this was incredibly effective. – End of semester evaluation, 2022
Overall, I really enjoyed this course. I went into the semester assuming that this would be the semester that everything began to tie itself together, and that definitely holds true. – End of semester evaluation, 2023
The strength of the course is the variety of readings and resources, and especially the course engagement and community built through the annotated readings. Having the instructor comment in those annotations and build that community was really helpful too. – End of semester evaluation, 2023
The pacing of the course was similar to semesters past, but the workload felt much more manageable despite taking two courses. – End of semester evaluation, 2023
I have more knowledge of learning design principles and feel like I can be more credible in talking about the tie between learning analytics and course design. – End of semester evaluation, 2023
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RULES, RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES
ACADEMIC CALENDAR & RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
By virtue of enrollment, each student agrees to uphold the high academic standards of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; academic misconduct is behavior that negatively impacts the integrity of the institution. Cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, and helping others commit these previously listed acts are examples of misconduct which may result in disciplinary action. Examples of disciplinary action include, but is not limited to, failure on the assignment/course, written reprimand, disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion.
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
The University of Wisconsin-Madison supports the right of all enrolled students to a full and equal educational opportunity. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Wisconsin State Statute (36.12), and UW-Madison policy (Faculty Document 1071) require that students with disabilities be reasonably accommodated in instruction and campus life. Reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities is a shared faculty and student responsibility. Students are expected to inform faculty [me] of their need for instructional accommodations by the end of the third week of the semester, or as soon as possible after a disability has been incurred or recognized. Faculty [I], will work either directly with the student [you] or in coordination with the McBurney Center to identify and provide reasonable instructional accommodations. Disability information, including instructional accommodations as part of a student’s educational record is confidential and protected under FERPA.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals. The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background – people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world. https://diversity.wisc.edu/