Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Learning analytics status:

No system in place or in development.  

System in place:

Moodle.  

Journey so far:

At RCS, learning analytics is not being implemented, however information and data on retention, admissions and attainment is collated and presented in an annual report alongside institutional performance indicators. Retention is the institutions key driver, with attendance being the only aspect monitored by data collection. While retention rates as generally high, particular areas where improvements could be made have been highlighted.  

Use of data is still a new concept at RCS. A data analyst role was introduced around three years ago. One of the key roles of the data analyst is to manually extract the key information from the annual report. This is the method used rather than having the data automatically processed by a system. A statistical analyst has also been recruited and has enabled a greater insight into using data for the student experience.  

If problems are flagged, interventions with students take the form of human-based one to one meetings. If a problem is identified, an initial meeting will be set with the student to talk through the situation and put measures in place to help improve things. Reasons for this generally include; following a period of illness, absence or a drop in performance. If improvements are not observed a second higher level meeting is then set. 

Students are central to decision making with the student union alongside a group of class reps being involved in decision making and policy development. This includes attending programme meetings where data findings are presented.  

Future goals:

Due to the nature of RCS as an academic institution, the general feeling is that it would be difficult to incorporate learning analytics and furthermore, difficult to see where it would fit in. This is mainly due to the staff already having the ability to gather information on all their students due to the class size being extremely small, in some cases classes even take place on a one to one basis.  

However, staff who work with data within the institution would like to see something done with learning analytics in the future. However, reiterating the previous point they also believe it would be dependent on whether a system could be created within the context of RCS.  

The institution has identified three key areas that must be looked at in more detail before learning analytics can be further considered: student and staff engagement with the information; development of an appropriate ethics policy; and identifying what information is available that could be used effectively.