On Tuesday and Wednesday, the 4th and 5th of June, 2024, the project team of the four-year research project „HELA - Improving HEI maturity to implement learning analytics“ conducted field research at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Information Technologies in Osijek.

One of the main goals of the HELA project is to develop a maturity model for implementing learning analytics in a hybrid environment. This model, a significant step in the advancement of learning analytics, consists of two key parts: the maturity model framework and the maturity model instrument.

The maturity model framework encompasses the theoretical definition of 29 capabilities categorized into eight categories, which higher education institutions need to have for the successful implementation of learning analytics. The maturity model instrument is a dynamic component that allows for the identification of the maturity level of higher education institutions. This measurement mechanism qualifies and quantifies the state of all 29 capabilities of each institution. Since not all categories and capabilities are equally important in the application of learning analytics, multi-criteria decision-making methods are used to determine the weights of the capabilities and categories. For this purpose, action research is conducted in the field by the project leader, Full Prof. Nina Begičević Ređep, Ph.D., together with her collaborators, where experts from the largest Croatian universities will assess the importance of individual categories and capabilities using the SNAP (Social Network Analysis Process) method.

The first significant step in this research journey was the visit to Josip Juraj Strossmayer University, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Information Technology in Osijek. Members of the Faculty's administration, including the dean, Full Prof. Tomislav Matić, Ph.D., and the vice dean for teaching and students, Assoc. Prof. Danijel Topić, Ph.D., contributed with their valuable experience in managing the institution. After collecting assessments from experts in Split, Rijeka, and Zagreb, qualitative descriptions of possible maturity levels for each capability will be developed. By integrating the weights of categories and capabilities and evaluating specific institutions using the developed descriptions, a comprehensive evaluation of the maturity of higher education institutions will be enabled.

Research project "HELA – Improving HEI maturity to implement learning analytics" is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2020-02-5071. The project's budget is €103.023,43, with a duration of four years. The third and final phase of the project runs from September 1, 2023, to February 28, 2025.