Columbus State University-[node:field-date:custom:Y]--Predictive Analytics, -Timely Interventions, -Early Alerts

Strategy 4.2 Use predictive analytics (EAB, D2L, or Ellucian) to help identify students who are off-track and help students understand their likelihood of success in particular programs.

Goals

• Provide intrusive advising to keep students on track to graduate.
• Increase use of D2L Brightspace to report in-progress grades.
• Implement software (SAP) that supplements the Academic Advising Record with diagnostic analytics and graphical displays of degree progress.
• Challenge the extant culture that limits assessment practices to summative evaluations of student performance.

High-impact strategy

• Identify students who may need special interventions in the semester

Summary of the Activities

• Educated faculty to use the Early Alert System (EAS). EAS is designed to assist undergraduate students who demonstrate difficulty in their classes by making them aware of support services available and by encouraging them to use these resources to promote academic success and student retention.  100% of faculty were notified (trained) with an email explaining the process of referral.
• Emailed faculty the link to the online referral form. Faculty members completed the referral at a secured site and students were contacted by the Academic Center for Excellence.
• 38 students were referred in Fall 2014; 37 in Spring 2015.  
• Met with identified at-risk students and referred them to appropriate and effective campus resources, such as Tutorial Services, Counseling, Office of Disability Services, and the Center for Career Development. Every day, ACE advisers checked their list of students with new alerts in the portal. Within 24 hours they contacted the student (via email, phone, etc., depending on the student’s preference). The adviser then referred the student to an appropriate resource or created an action plan to monitor the student and hold them accountable. The adviser then logged all activity in the notes section of the portal.  2,765 students total were served with SAP (1,515-Fall 2014, 1,250-Spring 2015).
• Developed campus signage to increase foot traffic to Tutorial Services. Signage updated campus-wide for all buildings and services.
• Offered more workshops for faculty to learn how to use D2L Brightspace to report in-progress grades and to understand why such communication is important. Center of Online Learning did 2,334 faculty consultations in 2014, a number that reflects multiple consultations with same faculty. COOL had 144 attend training—this is an increase of 2,041% for consultations over 2013 and an increase of 37% for training attendance.
• Required midterm grade submissions for all core classes. This was mandated by the Provost’s Office.
• Did not offer faculty development workshops on best assessment practices that explore multiple purposes for assessment (e.g. student self-assessment, formative assessment, summative evaluations) and strategies that enable students to identify and respond to course content deficiencies (e.g. backward design, feedback frequency). Focused attention on other activities instead.

Baseline Status

• Percentage of credits successfully completed (A, B, C, P, S) versus attempted (A, B, C, D, F, U, W, WF. Baseline is Fall 2009: 70%. See chart below in Measures for Success.

Interim Measures of Progress

• Increase faculty referral rate of EAS by 20% in 2014-2015. There were 48 student referrals from faculty in 2013-2014. The number of student referrals increased to 75 in 2014-2015 representing an increase of 56%.
• Increase number of faculty using D2L Brightspace as their grade book through training and consultations. Center of Online Learning (COOL) collected data based on number of consultations and number who attend training, but not a headcount of individual faculty who use the services.  COOL did 2,334 faculty consultations in 2014, a number that reflects multiple consultations with same faculty. COOL had 144 attend training—this is an increase of 2,041% for consultations over 2013 and an increase of 37% for training attendance.
• Increase use of assessment instrument (EvaluationKIT) for formative assessment. (Activity not performed so measure here is null.)

Measures of Success

Success is measured by student pass rate and retention. 

Percentage of credits successfully completed (A, B, C, P, S) versus attempted (A, B, C, D, F, U, W, WF) each fall semester for the past 5 years.

For freshmen, the percentage of earned to enrolled credits were:

Fall 2014: 83%

Fall 2013: 82%

Fall 2012: 74%

Fall 2011: 73%

Fall 2010: 66%

Fall 2009: 70%

Retention rate:

Fall 2014 - Spring 2015 retention rate for students seen in ACE = 85%

Fall 2014 - Fall 2015 retention rates for students seen in ACE = 79%

Overall Retention increase from FY14 to FY15 was 1.21 %.

Lessons Learned

• Academic Center of Excellence greatly improved intrusive advising efforts through the SAP and EAS.
• Creating an internally-developed academic analytics system such as SAP is resource intensive.