This article isn't about analytics, but rather, is what people think about analytics. Actually, it's about what a few people in New Zealand think about analytics. Normally I wouldn't care (even if their thoughts are published in an academic journal, and therefore, Better Than Us) but there's a nice observation to be found in the discussion. Some people "perceived analytics regarding its fundamental elements (e.g. data, statistics, numbers, KPIs, graphs, etc.)." Other people "viewed analytics in functional grounds... as the collection of a process... and tools... used to answer the difficult questions, techniques for extracting data and useful discerning information to describe and predict performance outcomes." It's unusual to see functionalism in academic papers about education; usually they're structural, describing processes and evaluations (but not what they're used for). As an aside, the journal editors should have corrected the Venn diagram, which should have used only two circles to depict the three concepts (structural, functional, structural and functional).
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