Data is the elixir of our times. Businesses use it to personalize communication and services — from retailers targeting advertising to health care providers identifying at-risk patients. Many companies say their success depends on data-driven decisions. In a fast-paced world, data makes a difference: It helps businesses personalize their approach to their customers and spot emerging trends that deserve extra attention.
Data has the power to change industries for the better — and education is poised to leverage it as well. Thanks in part to the number of students who were forced online in the last year, there is a trove of data that can help support students. Today, some innovative higher education institutions use data to nudge students to complete assignments, identify and connect with at-risk students, and to provide adaptive learning within a course. But what if the data could go even further? What if it could help educators not only intervene when a student is struggling, but also help them create a unique plan from the outset to potentially overcome struggles? Unlocking the power of data in higher ed could pave a path for a new way of learning for current — and future — generations.
Data Integration Can Support Struggling Students
The more conflicts a student faces on their academic journey — whether academic, financial, or personal — the more difficult it can be to complete a degree. Here, data integration can enable higher educators to not only intervene to support a struggling student, but to also build programs and systems to help a student overcome these obstacles.
Data can help check student understanding and guide educators to create customized learning plans and environments that could lead to increased persistence for individual students. It can automate interactions with students, sending emails and text messages that remind them to complete assignments, suggesting classes for improved course completion rates, and offering resources to students who may be identified as at risk.
For example, if a student agrees to disclose conversations with advisors, professors, and others at the school, interventions can be designed to support students who may be struggling with certain personal issues, such as food insecurity. This data could also generate personalized emails to help students with financial or other issues. By using data to build support systems around a student, institutions could presumably help a student succeed not just in their studies, but in other areas of their lives as well.
Higher education can find inspiration across industries including retail, financial services, and health care, which all use data to better support their patients and customers.
Personalizing the Student Experience
The health care industry is coming to rely more on data to drive its decisions and solidify patient/doctor relationships. Through the use of wearable devices, for example, doctors have direct access to their patient’s critical health data in real time. In turn, this data helps patients coordinate with their doctors to make healthy lifestyle changes and prevent illness.
Just like in health care, data can paint a powerful picture of a student’s academic journey. By aggregating pertinent student data like class engagement, assignment submission times, grades, and number of meetings with an advisor, educators can better understand how to engage with students in a way that resonates with them and design interventions that meet their needs.
And while a connected device may not convey the data educators need, there are other mechanisms that would allow data to flow to and be understood by teachers to better serve their students.
One example is through real-time automation. Many institutions already send students assignment reminders, but these reminders might not be helpful if they arrive when the student is at work, eating dinner, or picking up their child from school. By utilizing systems already in place, educators can study when students log in to their student portals to complete assignments, when they typically submit assignments, or identify when they are most active online so they can begin to tailor assignment reminders to times that the student will most likely engage. This type of customized intervention goes well beyond assignment reminders and can be applied to outreach on availability for tutoring, automated scheduling, and the delivery of student resources and tools.
Data has the possibility to revolutionize the online higher ed experience, but we must acknowledge the privacy priorities that need to be addressed to successfully implement a large-scale data integration program. Like any other industry — healthcare, retail, financial services – protecting personally identifiable information is paramount, and programs must be devised with comprehensive compliance and review measures in place. As more higher education institutions begin to develop customized interventions using data to support students as they progress through coursework, student consent will be critical and a framework must be developed for students to maintain control over when and how their data is used.
Creating a Better Motivation Structure with Data
Many college students are entering school later than students in the past. As such, these students are working while balancing schoolwork and family responsibilities, including caring for their children and aging parents. When these factors are combined with the rising cost of education, it can make ends difficult to meet for adult students.
Through aggregated data of instances like missed payments, class tardy marks, and absences, faculty can be alerted that a student is potentially struggling so they can check in on them. Additionally, tools exist to analyze digital conversations between students and staff. Assuming the student gives permission to this data capture, higher education institutions can use it to flag when a student expresses difficulties — either with classwork or other personal struggles — and identify unique support measures that could assist them, whether automatically via email or in person with a staff member.
Fine-tuning the use of data in higher education can give educators key insights into building motivation structures to encourage persistence. Additionally, data can clue in administrators on ways to create engaging ways for students to learn.
Gamification is one way to motivate behaviors in higher education. Gamification is successful in fitness classes that incorporate leaderboards to motivate exercisers and in credit card loyalty programs that encourage users to come back and serve as repeat customers with exclusive offers and perks.
In the higher education space, gamification can be used to motivate students and instill a sense of accountability and engagement. For instance, daily sign-ins to a learning management system can be used to incentivize students to get familiar with the portal. Gamified learning can also be used to nudge students to complete tasks such as reading a syllabus, signing in to the message boards, and knowing when assignments are due. Using programs already in place, we can take this accountability and engagement to the next level by using data to personalize these gamification experiences.
The use of data in higher education is not a new concept. However, higher education will do well to take note from other industries — recognizing that operationalizing data at a granular level can better support individual needs. The technology is there. By integrating the data, educators can remove the roadblocks students face today and help to ensure their success for the future.
This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Strategic Education Inc. and authored by Joe Schaefer, Chief Transformation Officer at Strategic Education, Inc.
