Online Course Design to Support Learning Analytics in Facilitating Personalized Academic Help

Online higher education is growing but carries some inherent difficulties for students. As many students do not actively seek help when stuck in learning, institutions should consider providing academic help in a proactive way. Since students are different and learn differently, personalized help is expected for the effectiveness. Leaning analytics (LA) is the technology that could be used to identify who are experiencing academic difficulties and what academic help is needed. Currently most LA systems are not functional to recommend detailed instructive feedback on how to improve a student's learning, and they also remain a challenge on data collecting. A research question is proposed from the course design perspective: how online courses can be designed in a way that supports learning analytics in facilitating personalized academic help. Some preliminary research has been conducted to answer this question.