Just-in-Time or Just-in-Case? Time, Learning Analytics, and the Academic Library

Abstract

In this essay, we explore the timescapes of library learning analytics. We contend that just-in-time strategies, a feature of late capital modes of production, New Public Management, and future-oriented risk management strategies inform the adoption of learning analytics. Learning analytics function as a form of temporal governmentality: current performance is scrutinized in order to anticipate future performance and prescribe just-in-time interventions to mitigate risk—not only for the student but also for the institution. Ultimately, we argue that using time as a lens to examine discourses surrounding library learning analytics reveals the temporalities reproduced in this discourse, which obscures questions of power, politics, and history. In describing what the future is, rather than what it could or should be, this discourse erases our ability to shape our futures, and our responsibility for so doing.