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tag: Student data

Blog Post
November 15, 2017

The American Talent Initiative’s Fall 2017 Data Working Group Meeting

In early October, the American Talent Initiative hosted main points of contact from member institutions in Washington, DC, for a Strategic Support Meeting, sharing research and connecting members around promising strategies for enhancing access and success for lower-income students. Later in the month, the American Talent Initiative held another convening, also in Washington DC, for the institutional research contacts of ATI member institutions. The meeting, run by Ithaka S+R and The Aspen Institute, had three primary…
Blog Post
August 10, 2017

Lessons Learned in Collecting Student-Level Data from Multiple Higher Education Institutions

Institutions of higher education vary widely in how they define, collect, and store their students’ data, making the collection of student-level data across institutions a challenging task. Since September 2015, Ithaka S+R has served as the independent evaluator of the Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) study, an intensive proactive and technology-enhanced advisement intervention for first-time low-income and/or first-generation students across the 11 four-year public universities that make up the University Innovation Alliance. We recently completed the…
Blog Post
August 8, 2017

Four Questions for Two Experts on the Future of Higher Education

Cappy Hill and Kevin Guthrie in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Recently ITHAKA president Kevin Guthrie and Ithaka S+R managing director Catharine Bond Hill sat down with the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Goldie Blumenstyk to discuss trends in higher education. Which innovations show the most promise and which are over-hyped? Join the conversation about adaptive learning technologies, data analytics, MOOCs, and OERs, and share your comments below.
Case Study
October 20, 2016

Institutional Transformation for Student Success

Lessons Learned from Ithaka S+R’s Case Studies

Over the past decade, U.S. colleges and universities have faced increasing pressure from funders, policymakers, and advocates to improve degree completion rates and demonstrate their value to students.[1] At the same time, researchers have produced substantial evidence about the efficacy of a number of structural and pedagogical changes institutions can make to help students succeed. These changes include remedial course redesign, proactive advising and coaching, active learning pedagogies incorporating technology, and streamlined pathways through institutions.[2] Yet…
Blog Post
September 29, 2016

How Should We Interpret the Survey?

Taking a Closer Look at Higher Ed Insights

The Spring 2016 Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights survey on obstacles to innovation that would promote student success identifies four top roadblocks:  Insufficient funding for public institutions; faculty incentives not aligned to teaching and learning; administrative silos; and faculty resistance to change. The top solutions, in turn, are rewarding faculty for innovating in teaching and learning, acquiring better evidence on how to bring initiatives to scale, nurturing better collaboration among PreK-12 systems, community colleges, and universities, and establishing a…
Blog Post
September 9, 2016

Leading the Way in Learning Analytics

Four Considerations

Earlier this week my Ithaka S+R colleagues and I published “Student Data in the Digital Era: An Overview of Current Practices,” in which we review how institutions of higher education are currently using student data, and some of the practical and ethical challenges they face in doing so. As we conducted research for this report, part of our Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education project with Stanford University, we heard recurring concerns about the growing role…
Blog Post
September 6, 2016

Stanford and Ithaka S+R Project on Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education

Newly available student data are making it possible to understand, improve, and represent student postsecondary learning and other outcomes in profoundly different ways. Yet the potential of these new uses remains under-realized. In addition to technical and coordination challenges, researchers, administrators, and instructors are facing complex questions about how to use these data responsibly. Ithaka S+R and Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Research through Online Learning (CAROL) have partnered on a new initiative to catalyze discussion, create resources, and begin…
Research Report
September 6, 2016

A Brief History of the Student Record

Abstract: This paper provides a brief history of the development and evolution of the student record. It argues that this history is best considered as generally consisting of three distinct periods: (1) an early period (1840-1910) that was characterized by large variation in student record keeping and a lack of defined relationships and hierarchy among educational institutions and levels. Uniformity in student record keeping—particularly with the adoption of the Carnegie Unit—became a way of solidifying practices of record keeping…
Research Report
September 6, 2016

Student Data in the Digital Era

An Overview of Current Practices

Newly available data are making it possible to understand, improve, and represent student learning and other outcomes in profoundly different ways. With online learning platforms, technology-enabled educational tools, and other digital technologies, data about students and student learning in post-secondary settings have become unprecedentedly extensive and easy to access, interpret, and share. This growing ubiquity and granularity offer new opportunities for institutions, researchers, instructors, and other organizations to put student data to myriad uses: researchers can better understand student learning…
Research Report
September 6, 2016

Applications of Student Data in Higher Education

Issues and Ethical Considerations

The second Asilomar convention organized by Stanford University and Ithaka S+R in June 2016 brought together a group of academics to facilitate a review of how student data is currently used in higher education. The discussions aimed to synthesize current best practices to specify norms for the ethical use of student data; and inform institutional, national and global policies regarding the research, application, and representation of adult student data. This paper focuses on the applications strand which sought to yield…
Blog Post
May 17, 2016

The New Transcript and Predictive Analytics

Only a Matter of Time?

As interest in alignment between education and industry increases, higher education institutions are looking for new ways to signal their students’ industry-relevant skills and experiences to employers in ways that are meaningful and practical. A promising example is the “new transcript” that a number of US colleges are developing. The new transcript includes information that is more readily translated into job skills than traditional transcript data, such as specific course learning outcomes and hours spent on extracurricular activities and…
Blog Post
April 28, 2016

Increasing Retention Across the Spectrum

Florida State University Aims to Graduate Each Student It Enrolls

For the past twenty years, Florida State University (FSU) has focused relentlessly on retaining and supporting every student it enrolls. Its efforts have yielded one of the largest increases in six-year graduation rates in the nation—nearly 16 percentage points, from 63.2 percent in 1994 to 79.1 percent in 2014. In our latest case study, “Broad-Based and Targeted: Florida State University’s Efforts to Retain Every Student,” Daniel Rossman and I detail FSU’s two-pronged strategy for improvement. First, it has sought…
Case Study
April 28, 2016

Broad-Based and Targeted

Florida State University’s Efforts to Retain Every Student

Over the past twenty years, Florida State University (FSU) has recorded one of the largest increases in six-year graduation rates in the nation—increasing from 63.2 percent for the 1988 entering cohort to 79.1 percent for the 2008 entering cohort. This improvement in outcomes has occurred with only a modest increase in students’ entering credentials—for example, the average SAT score of entering students has slightly increased during the time period. Instead of selecting its way to better outcomes, FSU has focused…
Blog Post
April 20, 2016

Responsible Use of Student Data

For several months, my colleagues and I at Ithaka S+R have been working with Mitchell Stevens, a professor at Stanford, on a project addressing the uses, challenges and opportunities for colleges and universities undertaking new forms of research, application, and representation of student administrative and learning data. Students’ increasing interaction with learning management systems, instructional technology, and administrative platforms is creating reams of new data about their learning behaviors and outcomes, and other experiences in school. And rapidly developing…