This presentation, presented by Ellen Wagner and Howard Bell at the ASU+GSV Conference in May 2017, outlines the need for supports when it comes to student success.
1. Ellen D. Wagner, Ph.D.
VP Research, Hobsons
Howard Bell
SVP/ GM, Student Success,
HObso
Student Success:
More Than Software
Student Success :
More Than Software
Ellen D. Wagner, Ph.D
VP Research, Hobsons
Howard Bell, SVP and GM,
Student Success, Hobsons
2. Currently work in K-12
Settings?
Currently work in post-
secondary ed settings?
Come from a foundation or an
NGO?
1 Are part of a commercial ed tech
software and services org?
Are part of a commercial ed
tech hardware/platform org?
Are part of an ed tech start up?
2
3
4
5
6
How Many ofYOU are Engaged inStudent Success?
3. The Many (Other) Stakeholders of Postsecondary Student
Success
• Students and their Families
• Advisors, and Student Services Professionals
• Faculty and Academic Affair Professionals
• Institutional Researchers, Registrars, Bursars
• Department(s) of Education
• Department(s) of Labor
• Employers
• Legislatures
4. Putting Data to Work in Service of Student
Success: The College CompletionAgenda
Source: New York Times; NCES
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2-yr
colleges
Graduation rates at 150% of time
Cohort year
6. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) Rankings, 2015
• The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), measures
reading ability, math and science literacy among 15-year-olds in developed
and developing countries every three years.
• The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive
38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science.
• Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th
in math and 19th in science.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
8. Evolving Goals of the US College Completion
Agenda, 2008-2017
Priorities related to improving college completions via analytics in
education have have evolved from:
(1) completion
(2) retention
(3) gainful employment (“high value certificates”)
(4) personalization
(5) rigor and quality
9. Integrated Planning andAdvising for Student Success
(iPASS): Putting Data to Work
• iPASS is an integrative approach to student success that promotes shared
ownership for educational progress among students, faculty, and staff.
• It encompasses services that help students formulate and advance toward
educational goals, including advising, counseling, progress tracking, and academic
early alerts.
• iPASS technologies contribute by documenting and tracking students’ educational
plans, improving data analysis, offering self-service resources that reduce advisor
workloads, and triggering interventions based on student behavior or faculty input.
https://www.educause.edu/ipass-grant-challenge
10. NEWSFLASH: Software, on its own, doesn’t help
a student graduate
– Career exploration tools need a student interested in exploring.
– What good is a mobile app that students don’t use?
– An alert flag is not an intervention, it is only a prompt.
– An online appointment is useless if the participants don’t show up.
– A drag-and-drop academic plan isn’t much good if a student doesn’t
follow it.
– A data visualization gathers virtual dust if someone isn’t looking at it,
preferably with an eye towards transforming the status quo.
11. In Praise of Today’Educational Intrapreneurs
The most important innovators in today’s student success are the people: the community
engaged in solving problems and responding to opportunities, in novel ways, using human
ingenuity. That is the very definition of innovation. Our software and services contribute to
their innovation in the service of student success.
• The faculty, advisors, and student services professionals working to help students
achieve their academic goals;
• The advisors, tutors, peer mentors, counselors, who help students progress
• The registrars, enrollment managers, recruiters, registrars, IR professionals, bursars,
deans and administrators dedicated to creating environments
• The students at the center of our energies.
13. Starfish by Hobsons helps all students engage with an informed, connected campus
community dedicated to keeping them on track to reach their education and life goals.
14. Pioneered early
alert and case
management
First to integrate
multi-source data
into common view
Added our 200th
higher education
institution
Joined
Hobsons
in 2015
Funded by Bill and
Melinda Gates
Foundation
Led development
of predictive
analytics-as-a-
service, as a not-
for-profit
membership
organization
First open source
common data
definitions,
interventions
inventory
Joined
Hobsons
in 2016
ADecade of Student Success Experience
15. Community
Strategy
Advice and insights from a
decade of work with
higher education
Analytics
Institution-level
insights to challenge
assumptions and
identify opportunities
Action
The Starfish Enterprise
Success Platform turns
data into action for
everyone on campus
An engaged and
accessible group of
innovators
Starfish IntegratedApproach
16. Action
is Imperative
Evidence
is Essential
Connections
are Critical
Time
is Valuable
What We Know
Good data can
challenge and validate
your assumptions, and
catalyse innovation.
Knowledge is only the
beginning. You need to
turn data into action to
help all students.
To support students
effectively at scale, you
need to work together,
across functional groups.
Your students need your
best help now. You must
act both quickly and
strategically.
18. • Capacity across silos
• Clean, secure data to inform
decision-making across the
institution
• Comprehensive understanding of
available interventions across the
student lifecycle
• Guidance on focusing questions
Leadership
19. • The ability to match interventions
to the level of concern
• Data at-a-glance and on-demand
• Power to generate reports and
prioritize activities
Advisors and Student
Services
20. • Input into strategic decisions
by functional leaders
• Ability to leverage existing skill
sets and expertise
• A phased approach with low
risk and high impact
• A deep understanding of the
impact of choices
Information Technology
21. • Simple tools to register concerns,
make referrals, and acknowledge
progress
• Integration of academics /LMS
with student success
• Connections to students, advisors,
counselors, coaches, and others
• Notifications when concerns are
resolved (“closing the loop”)
Faculty
22. • A network of clearly-defined,
helpful, personal resources
• Academic plans that connect
individual best-fit schedules to
goals
• Self-scheduling for meetings and
appointments online and in one
place
• Policies that encourage
persistence and grit
Students
23. • Clean, secure data to inform
decision-making across the
institution
• Ability to delegate some kinds of
daily reporting to focus on larger
research
Institutional Research
25. Action
is Imperative
Evidence
is Essential
Connections
are Critical
Time
is Valuable
Our Four Principles
Good data can
challenge and validate
your assumptions, and
catalyse innovation.
Knowledge is only the
beginning. You need to
turn data into action to
help all students.
To support students
effectively at scale, you
need to work together,
across functional groups.
Your students need your
best help now. You must
act both quickly and
strategically.
“This work has allowed us to
eliminate the duplication of services
by multiple departments and
streamline our programming to offer
first class interventions to our
student population.
Michelle Wiley, Student Support
Specialist, Penn State World
Campus
Evidence is Essential
26. “In order to achieve the
goals in our strategic plan,
it’s absolutely essential that
we approach student
success in a holistic way,
with good data to drive
decisions.
Mark Askren, CIO,
University of Nebraska -
Lincoln
Evidence is Essential
27. “We can’t just throw data at
faculty and expect them to
embrace it – and understand it –
unless they realize that there’s a
problem they’re trying to solve.”
Larry Dugan, Director of
Instructional Technologies,
Monroe Community College
(SUNY)
Connections are Critical
Source: Jankowski, Natasha A, “Unpacking Relationships: Instruction and Student Outcomes.” American Council on Education, 2017
28. Action is Imperative
“I believe that as an institution of
higher education, we have a
moral obligation to offer all that is
possible to assist with a student’s
success.
Dr. Francis L. Battisti, Executive
Vice President and Chief
Academic Officer, SUNY Broome
Community College
The link between software tools and student success has accelerated and been strengthened since 2012, when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation first awarded funds to colleges interested in actively partnering with technology companies to collaborate on using technology tools specifically designed to improve student advising and rates of student retention.
EDUCAUSE and Achieving the Dream have been leading these efforts to help institutions explore both the promise and the risks of iPASS
Identify students needing intervention or kudos
Connect students to campus services and people who can help
Assess which interventions are working
Help students plan their coursework and schedules to fit their goals and their lives.
Key Objective: Establish credibility – Why should they even listen to us? Our history is strong.
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So that’s why we’re in the same room together; necause you have some problems that need solving. Real problems, involving students, advisors, faculty, technology, funding, initiatives,…. And more. And that’s why I am really here.
SHORT VERSION:
Starfish was the first to bring student success solutions to now over 300 campuses in the US; we started back in 2008. PAR, another pioneer, was the first to bring student success analytics, they’ve been working with higher ed since 2011. So although this is an exciting new combination, neither one is a new solution.
And those experiences have been working experiences. Our solutions are not just “what is the latest idea” but vetting, testing, validating, refining, constantly. Thought leadershup isn’t separate from tools for us – it is deeply embedded. That is how we got to be who we are, and that is why Hobsons had the brilliant idea of bringing us together.
LONGER VERSION:
I’m here talking about Starfish, of course. But the Starfish today has in interesting history. The original Starfish Retention Solutions was founded in 2008, before anyone at your college had titles like “VP of Student Success.” We worked with higher education institutions as partners to develop data integration methods to bring campus systems together. We built tools for outreach – early alerts, messages, meetings, Kudos - and basically focused on helping advisors approach their jobs with a student-centric viewpoint. We started seeing improved outcomes right away. Our work resonated with a lot of different types of institutions, who were trying to find ways to accommodate a changing population of students, overwhelmed advising staff, and increased state and federal pressure to produce quality graduates.
While that was all going on, a group called the Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework was formed in 2011out of an institution-driven research project. The project’s initial challenge was “Can we actually create a set of data definitions that all institutions could use for catalyzing conversations, measuring progress, and benchmarking against one another?” Once they were able to say YES (no small feat), the group stayed together to focus on research, developing rigorous models that tied student risk to established predictors, and helping other institutions manage student success data initiatives on their campuses.
In 2015, Hobsons acquired Starfish and, in 2016, acquired PAR. The saying ”the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” has never been more true. Bringing PAR into the Starfish has given us our missing piece. Today, ”Starfish” means ALL of this <<wave at the whole timeline>>.
Of course, being at Hobsons has other advantages. Hobsons is famous for its K12 college and career readiness solution, Naviance, and it’s higher ed CRM, Radius. All together, we are a pretty comprehensive suite of solutions for institutions with different needs. Starfish alone works with more than 350 institutions today – the Hobsons footprint in education is much much larger.
Key Objective: Highlight the necessary components to building capacity for student success, establish a clear commitment to this vision and seek agreement.
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We suggest you start here. Above all else, these four things matter: Evidence, Action, Connections, and Time.
EVIDENCE IS ESSENTIAL
Real data can challenge some of your assumptions about your students, and validate others. And it’s not always bad news! You may find areas of excellence to replicate across programs, student populations that are getting 2x the interventions, so you can reallocate those resources more effectively, upward trends in course completion among your most concerning cohorts. In today’s higher education environment, the stakes are too high – you can’t afford to make decisions without information.
Here’s some evidence: Students who earn summer credits, enroll continuously, without stop-outs, and register on-time for courses? Those are all proven positive predictors of college completion. So those are behaviors that –statistically – you want to encourage. And there are lots of ways to do that.
On the other hand, PAR research indicates that withdrawing from one course doubles the likelihood a student will not be retained. That’s just one student, and just one withdrawal. But there isn’t just one student. There are lots and lots of them. And withdrawing from two courses quadruples the likelihood a student will not be retained. Once you know this, once you see this pattern in your data, you start thinking about ways – policies, peer check-ins, orientation, outreach – to better match students with schedules they can handle, make sure your course sequences are set up properly, and provide extra resources so students on the verge of withdrawing make the right choices.
Because if evidence is essential…
ACTION IS IMPERATIVE
Knowledge is power, but we could argue that what you DO with thtat knowledge is the most important part. A list of at-risk students is… just a list of students. They are not helped at all by being on a list somewhere. We did a call with Bowie State (an HBCU in MD) and when we presented the results of our data analysis, the president put us on mute, talked to his people, and came back,s aying “I want a list of those 56 students on my desk in the morning.” He got the data, and now wanted the action. So let’s talk abotu the action, because it can take a lot of different forms, and a lot of it is already happening – and happening effectively – today. Institutions spend 5-12% of their budgets on student supports, by some accountings. Almost everywhere we go, these supports are not integrated... And in many cases, no one actually knows the entire landscape. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a handle on what all those actions are, and who uses them, and how they could be measured, and which ones should be replicated or expanded and which ones can be reallocated? Because THEN you can get to work.
CONNECTIONS ARE CRITICAL.
Melinda Karp, from Community College Research Center, says to make a difference for students, advising must be “sustained, strategic, integrated, proactive, and personalized.” This means meeting students where they are, at point of need, in whatever modality is most sustainable for you. Community College of Philly has revolutionized the one-stop shop for student advising by adding tax prep services! A university in Florida put academic advisors right in the parking garages to meet with students. Fort Hays State University in Kansas has invested in training students to help other students who are struggling– they get an alert, set up a meeting, and literally walk their peers from office to office to get their issues resolved, in a friendly and non-intimidating way. And these are pretty low-tech, but incredibly impactful practices.
Technology can help with these connections, of course. Here’s just one; we’ll have more later: Seneca College in Canada was an early adopter of Starfish. It was years ago now, but they used to say “when we just had warning flags, we were only reaching 36% of our student population. Adding kudos meant we were reaching 51% of our students and adding tutorial referrals added another 15%. So, instead of Starfish acting merely as an early warning system, it has become a valuable communication and outreach tool for our faculty and advisors.”
Then just the other day, we talked to SUNY Broome in New York, who found that “first time, full-time students who received academic feedback [that’s flags, kudos and referrals] through Starfish, were retained on average 13.4 percentage points higher than those students who received no academic feedback.” So it’s not just that you’re reaching more students, but that when you do so, you are making a real difference.
TIME IS VALUABLE
Back to SUNY, this is SUNY Empire State, where they told us “We're reporting on statistics that happened in 2015. It's already 2017. We're already 18 months behind, because it takes so long to run the reports and analyze and curate, and in the meantime the student population is progressing and progressing.” Well THAT won’t do. You have students arriving every day. If you wait two years to get your evidence, take action, and connect students to helpful people… well, then you’ve lost two years of students.
The truth is, Higher ed has unwritten rules, and it’s kind of a miracle that we expect students to know how to navigate this new world. What is a bursar? I have to pay a key deposit? Is the matriculation ceremony mandatory or optional? If I don’t have enough money to register next term do I go to financial aid, the registrar, my academic advisor, my dean? Deans seem busy – are they available to help me if I’m worried about a teacher? These are questions we can answer, but you’ve got to get to these students right away, before they even become at risk. After all, life happens every day. And those are real people, with real lives, and they have missed a big opportunity to change their trajectories.
What are students really struggling with?
UNL:
PROBLEMS TO SOLVE:
Wanted to show student success as a priority
-- Goal: Deploy individual recovery plans for students on academic probation
Difficult to share information appropriately
-- Goal: Consolidate advising records into one secure system
Need for evidence-based decision-making
-- Goal: Use data to break down barriers separating units and functional groups
SCHOOL PROFILE:
UNL centralized advising records for 19.000 students across eight academic colleges
at 8 academic colleges
57% six-year graduation rate
STARFISH STORY:
Launched Starfish EA/CO/AD in January 2012 (12 week implementation!)
Integrated Peoplesoft, Blackboard
Strategic plan calls for boosting the six-year graduation rate to 70% by 2017
By July 2014 more than 100,000 advising notes (including 13,357 in the very first term they were available) were entered into the Starfish platform
Also more than 1,300 success plans were filed in the Starfish platform in the spring 2014 semester, representing 86 percent of the undergraduates on probation.
Starfish 360 Award Winner in 2015!!
TO LEARN MORE:
Archived Webinar w Amy Goodburn (associate vice chancellor for academic affairs) from June 2014
Article in Campus Technology from July 2
According to a 2016 survey of first year college students, 28% of students anticipated needing tutoring or remedial work in math in their first year. This is a self-identified problem, not something revealed through predictive modelling or an alert flag. These students who know they need help. Do they know where to get it? You need to let students help themselves where able; give your students access to resources on campus, & show them how to connect, remove the obstacles academic and otherwise, teach them how to ask for help when they need it.
Kuh identified that students that can clearly communicate what they want to
Let them develop a plan, and see the consequences of the choices. Help them identify their aspirations and necessary steps to achieve them. Let students be proactively involved in their education. For many students, this will be enough, this is what they need to be successful. But certainly not for all for all students. SO….
HE has unwritten rules, and it’s kind of a miracle that we expect students to know how to navigate this new world. What is a bursar? What is a key deposit? Is the matriculation ceremony mandatory or optional? Do I go to my faculty member if I have a academic problem, or someone else? Deans seem busy – are they available to help me if I’m worried about a teacher? What do I need to do to keep my financial aid?
It’s important that students are able to answer these questions.
Did you know that only ONE course withdrawal in the 1sst year can negatively predict a student’s chance of retention
UMUC:
“Having the insights about high-impact ‘obstacle courses’ and their impact on student success is instrumental in making decisions about which courses are the most appropriate for special assistance or interventions.”
Denise Nadasen, Associate VP for Institutional Research, UMUC