Certificate in Learning Analytics

Develop learning analytic skills in the areas of assessment, development, instruction, research, and policy to address issues in educating both typical and atypical learners.

Certificate Overview

The goal of learning analytics is to better understand and improve learning for students, teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders and to better comprehend, organize, and provision educational data. Learning analytics is strongly focused on providing in-time information to inform interventions and teaching methodologies through predictive modeling. The end result is more effective educational systems.

Learning analytics methods are generalizable to education researchers in many subfields that use large datasets to better understand educational outcomes. Students will develop knowledge of how learning analytics can be applied to the field of education intervention and policy.

Career Opportunities

Opportunities for students with experience in learning analytics include research positions, academic appointments, industry jobs in educational technology companies, and administrative employment at the school, district, state, and federal level. A certificate earned in this area could considerably strengthen graduates’ employability.

Headshot photo of Scott Crossley

Scott Crossley, Professor of Special Education

"The certificate will supplement students’ experience by giving them the opportunity to learn more about large data frames, data analytics, and data mining. Students will graduate with a firm understanding of how data integrates in our daily lives."

Certificate Details

Certificate Director: Scott Crossley

Required Hours: 12

Prerequisites: Completed Bachelor's degree plus current enrollment in a master's or doctoral degree program within Vanderbilt University

Home Academic Department: Special Education

Note: Not all Peabody professional degree programs include enough elective credits to make earning an additional certificate possible. Students are encouraged to confer with their program director as well as with certificate directors to ensure they can meet all requirements for both degree and certificate programs.

Certificate Curriculum

Courses in this certificate are domain agnostic. They include:

  • Special Topics, Fundamentals of Learning Analytics (SPED 7500a)
  • Learner Database Management (in development)
  • Special Topics, Educational Language Analysis (SPED 7500b)
  • Machine Learning for Educational Applications (in development)

Note: Certificate courses are subject to change.

Certificate Outcomes

Through this certificate, students will: 

  • Gain foundational skills and knowledge to analyze learner data from educational datasets
  • Be introduced to basic programming languages for analyzing data
  • Learn the essential principles for collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting educational data
  • Use text analysis strategies and natural language processing techniques to extract information from educational related text
  • Explore advanced concepts in machine learning to conceptualize educational problems from an algorithmic perspective
Learn More About Admission to Peabody