A Call to Action for Student Success Analytics (2016)

INTRODUCTIONLEVERAGING ANALYTICS TO OPTIMIZE STUDENT SUCCESS is an institutional strategy whose time has come. It has the potential to dramatically improve retention and graduation rates, reduce the total cost of completion of certificates and degrees, enhance the full-spectrum development of learners, enable greater career connections, and serve as a differentiator for institutions that acquire this organizational capacity.EXAMPLES OF STUDENT SUCCESS ANALYTICS FROM SUCCESSFUL INSTITUTIONSThe use of in higher education and the interventions they drive has been advancing perceptibly among leading institutions, with tangible results. Our research on leading institutions (Norris and Baer 2013) determined that many were deploying along seven distinctive dimensions that span the student life cycle and the student experience. The dimensions at the top of this typology are the most highly developed and mature. Those at the bottom are less well developed and emergent. They are also sources of substantial opportunity for future improvement. Leveraging the actions and interventions along these dimensions has the potential to substantially reduce and/or mitigate risk and increase student success, as demonstrated in figure 1.MANAGING THE STUDENT PIPELINEInstitutions have been using descriptive/diagnostic for years to shape their entering classes, refine policies, and identify at-risk students for mentoring and special interventions. Institutions are using these strategic enrollment management techniques to improve their yield/ conversion rates, enhance current enrollments, and improve retention. In recent years, predictive have been added to these practices. The University of Texas at Austin (University Innovation Alliance n.d.(c)) is recognized as a best-practice leader for its use of predictive to identify at-risk students and craft mentoring and support experiences for them. Georgia State University (University Innovation Alliance n.d.(b)) is often cited as a leader in overall analytics-driven retention improvement practices that continue throughout the student life cycle.ELIMINATING BARRIERS, OBSTACLES, AND RISKY STRUCTURES/PRACTICES/PROCESSESInstitutions have used descriptive and diagnostic to create best practices that reduce risk in structures, processes, and policies. Favorite best practices have included reinventing the first-year experience; eliminating barriers, bottlenecks, and inconsistencies of approach; providing better mentoring and advising; and advancing peer-to-peer learning and tutoring (supplemental instruction). In addition, a focus on guided course and service pathways, instead of the traditional cafeteria-based choices that often overwhelm students, improves student decision making (see Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins 2015). A number of organizations have been actively promoting such best practices tailored to the institutional context.DYNAMIC INTERVENTIONS IN REAL TIMEFor some time, for-profit institutions like the American Public University System, Capella University, and the University of Phoenix have used embedded practice techniques-from organizations such as the Education Trust, Achieving the Dream, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-and these best practices are now being deployed in many nonprofit institutions' predictive to identify at-risk behavior in online students. Purdue University uses its Course Signals product with embedded predictive modeling to give students a red, yellow, or green light warning of their progress, starting with students in large freshman courses. Rio Salado College has developed similar alert/intervention capabilities.Some software providers have used prepackaged applications to enable institutions to provide dynamic, real-time assessment, alert, and intervention capabilities to frontline faculty and staff. An important contribution of such user-friendly applications is that they enable analytics for the masses, liberating the energies of staff to undertake higher-level predictive and prescriptive analytics. …