Learning analytics dashboards are at the core of the LAK vision to involve the human into the decision-making process. The key focus of these dashboards is to support better human sense-making and decision-making by visualising data about learners to a variety of stakeholders. Early research on learning analytics dashboards focused on the use of visualisation and prediction techniques and demonstrates the rich potential of dashboards in a variety of learning settings. Present research increasingly uses participatory design methods to tailor dashboards to the needs of stakeholders, employs multimodal data acquisition techniques, and starts to research theoretical underpinnings of dashboards. In this paper, we present these past and present research efforts as well as the results of the VISLA19 workshop on "Visual approaches to Learning Analytics" that was held at LAK19 with experts in the domain to identify and articulate common practices and challenges for the domain. Based on an analysis of the results, we present a research agenda to help shape the future of learning analytics dashboards.

This paper presents LISSA (Learning dashboard for Insights and Support during Study Advice), a learning analytics dashboard designed, developed, and evaluated in collaboration with study advisers. The overall objective is to facilitate communication between study advisers and students by visualizing grade data that is commonly available in any institution. More specifically, the dashboard attempts to support the dialogue between adviser and student through an overview of study progress, peer comparison, and by triggering insights based on facts as a starting point for discussion and argumentation. We report on the iterative design process and evaluation results of a deployment in 97 advising sessions. We have found that the dashboard supports the current adviser-student dialogue, helps them motivate students, triggers conversation, and provides tools to add personalization, depth, and nuance to the advising session. It provides insights at a factual, interpretative, and reflective level and allows both adviser and student to take an active role during the session.