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Issues and Challenges for Implementing Writing Analytics at Higher Education

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Utilizing Learning Analytics to Support Study Success

Abstract

Effective written communication is an essential skill which promotes educational success for undergraduates. One of the key requirements of good academic writing in higher education is that students must develop a critical mind and learn how to construct sound arguments in their discipline. Writing analytics focuses on the measurement and analysis of written texts to improve the teaching and learning of writing and is being developed at the intersection of fields such as automated assessment and computational linguistics. Since writing is an activity that is deeply human, its association with computational formulations is double-edged. This chapter discusses issues and challenges for implementing writing analytics in higher education through theoretical considerations that emerge from the literature review and an example application. It includes findings from empirical research conducted with academic tutors of the Open University, UK, on adopting writing analytics to support their feedback processes, which reveal the preconceptions that academic tutors have had about the use of writing analytics specifically concerns centred around the privacy and ethical aspects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Open University, UK, Milton Keynes, UK

    Duygu Bektik

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  1. Duygu Bektik
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Correspondence to Duygu Bektik .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Mannheim, Mannheim, BW, Germany

    Dirk Ifenthaler , Dana-Kristin Mah  & Jane Yin-Kim Yau ,  & 

  2. Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia

    Dirk Ifenthaler

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Bektik, D. (2019). Issues and Challenges for Implementing Writing Analytics at Higher Education. In: Ifenthaler, D., Mah, DK., Yau, J.YK. (eds) Utilizing Learning Analytics to Support Study Success. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64792-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64792-0_9

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64792-0

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