Student Attainment & Progression

Seven institutions (37% of the 19 institutions interviewed) mentioned student attainment and progression as key drivers for implementing learning analytics. This is not surprising, as student attainment and progression are very important to students, to higher education institutions, to the Scottish Funding Council and to QAA Scotland, as student retention and progression are a sector-wide area of focus within the 2017-2020 Enhancement Theme (2019).

Definition & background:

Student attainment and progression are important elements of higher education, as the primary motivating factor for students enrolling in higher education is to graduate with a degree or qualification. Student attainment can be defined as the qualification or the assignment grades obtained by students, and student progression can be defined as the advancement of a student to the following year of education (or a further course).

Learning analytics can improve attainment and progression by identifying the underlying factors contributing to successful student attainment and progression. Once these factors have been identified they can be promoted to students in general, or students can be individually targeted for intervention if they seem to be at risk of non-attainment or non-progression.

Institutions stating improvement of student attainment and progress as a key driver:

• University of Dundee
• Edinburgh Napier University
• Heriot Watt University
• University of the Highlands and Islands
• Robert Gordon University
• Scotland’s Rural College
• Open University in Scotland

Learning analytics projects focused on student attainment and progression:

• Although many higher education institutions mention student attainment and progression as important factors for the implementation of learning analytics, there is no complete learning analytics project focused exclusively on attainment or progression.
• Some institutions, for example Robert Gordon, are interested in the elements contributing to achievement and attainment. Learning analytics can be beneficial in this sense by permitting the analysis of underlying factors of academic attainment.
• Edinburgh Napier expressed an interest in improving student attainment and are in the process of a scoping project to assess how learning analytics should be used at their institution. However, care has already been taken to ensure that staff understand that learning analytics is not solely a means to monitor student performance, but more importantly to assess student engagement more generally.

Case Study:

The University of Dundee are currently running a learning analytics system focused on retention and progression. Their Registry operates dashboards which work by using information from student records (Strategic Information Technology Systems; SITS) and pulling this into dynamic spreadsheets which Programme Leads can then access through the VLE. Programme Leads can implement strategies to encourage student attainment and progression.

Conclusion:

Overall, although there are currently not many projects that specifically target student attainment and progression, these are very important themes in higher education. Learning analytics can achieve more comprehensive understandings of these factors, which would ultimately lead to improvements in strategies and policies involving attainment and progression. Due to a large number of institutions stating an interest in these topics, and the fact that many of these universities are just starting to explore how learning analytics could help them, more projects focused on student attainment and progression should arise within the next few years.