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Learning Analytics and Stakeholder Inclusion: What do We Mean When We Say "Human-Centered"? #105

Closed nickumia closed 5 months ago

nickumia commented 8 months ago

Given the growth in interest in human-centeredness within the learning analytics community - a workshop at LAK, a special issue in the Journal of Learning Analytics and multiple papers published on the topic - it seems an appropriate time to critically evaluate the popular design approach. Using a corpus of 165 publications that have substantial reference to both learning analytics and human-centeredness, the following paper delineates what is meant by "human-centered" and then discusses what the implications are for this approach. The conclusion reached through this analysis is that when authors refer to human-centeredness in learning analytics they are largely referring to stakeholder inclusion and the means by which this can be achieved (methodologically, politically and logistically). Furthermore, the justification for stakeholder inclusion is often coached in terms of its ability to develop more effective learning analytics applications along several dimensions (efficiency, efficacy, impact). With reference to human-centered design in other fields a discussion follows of the issues with such an approach and a prediction that LA will likely move toward a more neutral stance on stakeholder inclusion, as has occurred in both human-centered design and stakeholder engagement research in the past. A more stakeholder-neutral stance is defined as one in which stakeholder inclusion is one of many tools utilized in developing learning analytics applications.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3576050.3576110 (2023)

Evaluate the elements of "human-centered"-ness.

Peer Papers:

Old Papers:

nickumia commented 5 months ago

Articles that do not offer definitions do however use the term human-centered in specific ways. Rather than a definition, the majority of articles offer an impression of human-centeredness that draws on one or more of the following characteristics. 1) It involves engagement of stakeholders who are not researchers or designers, 2) as a description of methods that involve engagement of these stakeholders (these cover a wide range though including co-design, participatory design, user-centered design, story-based design), and 3) it is the highest level in a taxonomy of areas that seek to prioritize input from end users.

"...human-centredness is a characteristic of systems that have been carefully designed by identifying the critical stakeholders, their relationships, and the con-texts in which those systems will function. Creative processes or methodologies have then been used to generate an understanding of the stakeholders’ needs, desires, and experiences... The variety of terminology used for closely related work (including user-centred design, participatory design, and human-centred de- sign) reflects distinct identities in those fields, which is reflected in the LA community. We use the broad label of human-centred learning analytics (HCLA) to remain agnostic about the finer distinctions and to take into account the widest range of pertinent factors."

"A human-centred designer is a relatively transparent figure who does not impose preferences on a project, but who instead stimulates, conveys and translates the will of the people involved"

Sanders et al. characterizes human-centeredness as bifurcating into two camps, on one side the meaning is expanded to anything that involves stakeholders, making it a meta-field that encompasses other fields such as partic- ipatory design, co-design and user-centered design [29]. Norman is also of this view [22]. The other camp seeks to limit the meaning of human-centeredness by stressing the centering aspects of the definition - human-centered design must revolve around all possi- ble stakeholders at all points in the research or design process.

Wide human-centered design is a meta-label for any process that seeks to include users, while narrow human- centered design requires that stakeholders be included at many points, but especially during ideation and problem definition

A concrete definition is helpful to prevent people from abusing the term, labeling things as human centered that aren't really and it is important to give a purposeful definition to provide clarity

the wide definition of human-centeredness does not com- mit to dealing with the inherent tensions between stakeholders and the design, and how to prioritize stakeholder views or who should be making those decisions.

Absent from the discussion in learning analytics is a common critique of human-centeredness, that effectiveness is not a valid reason to pursue stakeholder inclusion

To be clear, we are not arguing that involving stakeholders could not lead to the creation of better learning analytics, rather, we are saying that there is little evidence for the position that it will always be the case or even the case most of the time.

Human-centeredness seems to rest on the idea that stakeholders have access to knowledge that researchers and designers do not, and access to this knowledge will create better research and design products. This may be true, but there is no reason why it must be true, or even true a majority of the time.

Greenwood argues that stakeholder inclusion should be considered a tool in the designer’s belt, rather than the fulcrum around which the design must pivot. Inclusion of stake- holders can be a positive or negative force and which can depend on many factors.

It is inadvisable to totally adhere to stakeholder inclusion above other considerations as this can more often than not result in a Ptolemaic Error, where the focus on ourselves makes us blind to what we are actually orbiting around.

nickumia commented 5 months ago

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