Learning analytics readiness and awareness in developing countries: the case of Egypt

The higher education institutions in Egypt are challenged with the high enrolment student rates, crowded classes and inability to track each student's progress individually, which increased the demand to find a solution to redeem those problems. Although learning analytics is an expanding solution to support different educational challenges, from performance tracking and detecting students at risk, learning analytics developments concentrated on addressing solutions for developed countries.

Accordingly, the discipline still requires a broader and in-depth interpretation of its contextual usage in developing countries, especially Egypt. The usage and development of learning analytics need direct input from various stakeholders to understand their views towards learning analytics. The study seeks to address this problem to explore the situation in the Egyptian context to build guidance for learning analytics usage in developing countries, especially Egypt.

The study has employed a mixed-method approach to investigate stakeholders’ perceptions toward learning analytics in developing countries, taking Egypt as a contextual example. The study conducted interviews with decision-makers and faculty members, along with focus groups with students. Moreover, a questionnaire depending on a model developed from the literature and qualitative analysis was distributed to the main stakeholders, mainly students and instructors, to test the research hypotheses.

The study extracted learning analytics implementation requirements and challenges in developing countries. It helped the researcher develop a model containing the main drivers that influence learning analytics impact and implementation.