Digitalisation of Higher Education. A Critical Analysis of Learning Analytics Architectures Using the Example of Dashboards

Leaning on theories of governmentality, the article explores which new formats of self-governing and being-governed are emerging at universities due to the implementation of learning analytics architectures. We carve out how dashboards function as interfaces with regimes of datafication, in which the digital traces left by the learning subjects are processed and presented in real time for the purposes of profiling, forecasting and comparison. We maintain that in the context of digital higher education, new interdependencies develop between practices of external government and self-government. The specific forms of interlocking external control and voluntary, self-normalising, internal control found here differ from the enactments of power in analogue contexts.