A while ago I was approached by staff at RMIT University to give a session on the use of Google Analytics for Learning Analytics. This is something I’ve touched upon in past presentations and blog posts. One of the advantages of being on the Google Experts programme is rubbing shoulders with experts in other products like Google Analytics. One such expert is Nico Miceli who got his Google Experts badge around the same time as me. Nico has taken Google Analytics far beyond pageviews using GA to track the physical world and even for textual analysis. Given Nico’s expertise I was keen to get him involved in the sessions and fortunately for me he was up for it.
If you’d like to see what we talked about the below is the session abstract, our slide deck and recording of the session co-produced with Nico
Traffic analysis tools for websites are well established with Google Analytics reportedly having the majority market share used in over 80% of websites with tracking enabled. As the internet and web technologies have evolved so has the functionality of traffic analysis tools going far beyond pageviews enabling cohort analysis, acquisitions and conversion reporting, and more. A more recent development is the emergence of Learning Analytics which focus on “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs”. Given the proportion of learning and teaching that now occurs online this session explores how Google Analytics can be used for Learning Analytics. As part of this we cover Google Analytics tracking and integration techniques including how Google Analytics can be deployed at scale provide custom reporting and enabling actionable insight.