Conflicting Values: An Exploration of the Tensions between Learning Analytics and Academic Librarianship

Abstract

The prevailing rhetoric concerning learning analytics is that its use will support the educational endeavor and make significant improvements to teaching and learning. For academic libraries, learning analytics presents the possibility of using library data to coordinate, integrate, and align with the goals of the institutions in which they are embedded. While libraries have a long history of collecting data to support various service and learning objectives, those data have typically been siloed, de-identified, private, and confidential. Although there are positive contributions that learning analytics can make to the learning process, there are concerns associated with its use, particularly the tensions between the objectives of learning analytics contrasted with different conceptualizations of learners and the values of education and librarianship. Institutions of higher education use learning analytics to achieve institutionally defined goals and outcomes for students, which creates tensions with the enshrined values of the American Library Association's Code of Ethics, Library Bill of Rights, and Core Competencies of Librarianship. The transcendent benefits to society that are inherent in education and academic librarianship, such as the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, are not measurable through learning analytics.