The power of data: how learning analytics platforms can boost student engagement and institutional success
Higher education institutions have access to huge amounts of data, but they often face complications when using it to support student success. Companies like IntelliBoard can bring insights to help institutions achieve their goals
Data analytics is one of the most powerful tools in a university’s arsenal when it comes to enhancing student success, yet many don’t know how best to harness the data at their disposal. During a session at the 2023 THE Digital Universities Europe event, Becky Keith, chief product officer at global learning analytics company IntelliBoard, shared her expertise on how universities can turn the insights gained by their data into actionable results.
IntelliBoard’s learning analytics programme brings together data from a variety of learning sources, such as learning management systems like Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard, adding metadata definitions and organising it to produce quick queries, reports and dashboards.
“IntelliBoard has over 70 default reports and dashboards,” Keith said. “We also have a visual builder allowing you to customise the data and apply conditional formatting. You can also define a calculation or a formula specific to your institution or a department to define risk.”
The benefits of these reports and dashboards are numerous, enabling institutions to see in real-time how students are engaging with their courses. This helps educators manage the success of a programme or module and monitor what improvements can be made to improve performance and increase retention.
“The key to learning analytics is to get it in the hands of the people who impact the outcomes of the learning,” Keith said. “You want your advisors or your instructors to know who is at risk and, more importantly, why. We want to identify students at risk as early in the term as possible so we can make those interventions and save those students.”
IntelliBoard not only presents users’ data in a clear and actionable way but also helps them tackle the issues they face. “We analyse, we predict. But we don’t want to stop there,” Keith said. “If we stop there, nothing changes. We want to then make the intervention, note the intervention and see the outcome change.”
IntelliBoard’s platform enables institutions to send notifications directly to students who may be at risk. For example, targeted notifications can be sent to students who have not yet opened an assignment that is due in 24 hours or whose course engagement has unexpectedly dropped. These can be launched directly from a report, and the platform can set up automated notifications to the target audience.
Keith also addressed concerns that institutions may have about the security of the data shared on the platform, explaining that specific permissions can be built for individuals using the dashboards or reports.
Keith summed up the mission of IntelliBoard at the close of the session, emphasising the company’s commitment to enhancing student and, therefore, institutional success. “We’re not data for business intelligence, we’re learning intelligence. We partner with institutions to support their retention and learning outcomes,” she said. “We identify learners who are at risk, encouraging instructors and advisors to intervene so those students persist and complete their learning programme.”
The speaker:
- Becky Keith, chief product officer, IntelliBoard
