The university is using learning analytics to track engagement, progression and retention. They are using learning analytics as part of a wider solution to tackle issues surrounding identifying students who are at risk as early as possible. The term ‘engagement indicators’ is used regarding assessing engagement through attendance, VLE and assignment submissions to allow personal tutors to become aware when a student is becoming disengaged.
UHI operates a federation model with 13 academic partners and while one model does not span across all of these, the majority of the education partners use a traffic light system to help meet their learning analytics objectives. This system is called BRAG: (Blue, Red, Amber, Green) and is implemented to provide the data for the engagement indicators.
Future goals:
UHI has three key priorities moving forward: early intervention (including social inclusion and well-being), identifying patterns on engagement to improve support and teaching materials and supporting personal academic tutors. One of the key goals they have to address these priorities is to begin the process of looking at the whole institution more broadly. Specifically, identifying the point in modules where the whole cohort starts to struggle with the aim of implementing a way to address this. Finally, while students have been involved in the whole learning analytics development process their future goals include some form of student training on the system.