ABSTRACT
The need to be discipline-focused aligned with potential student users. In this chapter, the authors describe a project conducted by a team of faculty and graduate students who followed a mixed-methods, user-focused approach to Learning Analytics. This approach demonstrates that incorporating feedback from users from the outset identifies specific ideas for ways in which data could provide insights and potentially lead to changed behavior. The authors also describe three iterations of their data collection work with students and discuss how they integrated qualitative data and quantitative data modeling. The first iteration consisted of a focus group with eight engineering students on students' views of data and ideas for potential useful data streams. The second consisted of individual interviews with faculty members who taught a common course within a first-year engineering program. The third iteration consisted of individual interviews with 10 first-year engineering students that probed on some of the themes that emerged in the prior data collection iterations.
