Today’s students are hyper-aware of return on investment. With student loan debt ballooning, fewer students are making the long-term commitment to obtain a two or four year degree. In order to attract and retain students, higher ed will need to change the way it accesses, utilizes and leverages its data.
Today’s educational software landscape is comprised of educational software products that have traditionally been monolithic with inflexible user experiences, loosely connected to each other through poorly aligned information models and awkward strategies for synchronizing information. As a consequence, the information system silos that exist in today’s educational environments do not meet the rapidly evolving needs of today’s educators, learners and educational organizations. More importantly, these teachers, students, and educational leaders, those who consume and use advanced educational software and systems, have little control over the direction of the industry across the design requirements critical to today’s advanced software needs.
The initiation of accountability specifications and the use of innovative adaptive technologies are just a couple approaches institutions are taking to better enable student success. In this session, we will examine the benefits of using two distinct quality scorecards to achieve better data integration, collection and analysis which can then lead to more informed decision making. The two scorecards are the OLC Scorecard (need to define) and the DXtera Next Generation Integration Scorecard. The speakers will engage the audience in a Next Generation By Design session to improve the linkage between these scorecards and explore deploying these in collaborative efforts. We will also explore the way implementation of these accountability specifications can also lead to better predictive learning analytics.
What is a quality scorecard? A scorecard is a criteria and benchmarking tool that enables programs and institutions to gain a more holistic view of what’s currently available to them and working for them while also bringing into focus areas for improvement. The two scorecards we will examine are designed for improvement at both the macro and micro levels.
At the macro level, the first scorecard is used to improve the utilization of an institution’s large scale enterprise systems (SIS, LMS, etc.). The Next Generation Integration Scorecard (NGIS) is an instrument designed to help consumers of enterprise systems and educational software to measure the readiness of candidate solutions to meet the needs of next generation software environments and to work together to building next generation information infrastructure. The vision of Next Generation Educational Systems (NGES) is characterized by a departure from traditional, monolithic systems towards ecosystems of educational applications and enterprise infrastructure services that allow for a broadening marketplace of solutions and increased consumer choice. You'll also learn about NGES and their characteristics.
Data is often lost or under-utilized. Information systems typically have difficulty “talking” to one another. For example, as students are admitted, they are often assigned a unique ID. It should be possible, therefore, to track a student’s progress throughout his or her time at the institution. Grades, attendance, advising, and tutoring are often important indicators of progress and retention, but too often data is not shared between the various systems. Use of this macro level scorecard could greatly improve an institution’s ability to allow those systems to communicate with each other.
Use of the second scorecard at the micro level allows an institution to directly impact student learning and further enables the ability of an institution to leverage adaptive and predictive learning technologies. The OLC scorecard is designed to be used at the online program level. Every Learning Management System (LMS) has analytic capabilities, but technology alone cannot improve student success. Rather, it is the understanding of what makes for a quality learning environment that ensures learning success. Use of this micro level scorecard can greatly improve the way an institution collects and utilizes student data.
This is an interactive Next Generation By Design session. Participants will have an opportunity to engage with a growing OLC and DXtera community to enable the alignment of the Scorecards, brainstorm together their existing needs for better leveraging of their institutions’ data and help design the utilization of both to improve delivery to your students. The ultimate goal of any institution of higher learning is student success—but it is also a business. The product they provide promises return on investment to their student population and today’s student are becoming more aware of his or her options. It is incumbent upon institutions of higher ed to heed this call.