Dr David Grundy, Director of Digital Education
Newcastle University Business School
Faculty of Humanities and Social SciencesÂ
What did you do?
I was part of the Learning Analytics Pilot who were using the Jisc platform, Data Explorer, to have data-informed conversations with my students about their progress and support. I usually have four meetings a year with my mentees, and I would use the data on the Jisc Dashboard to help craft talking points for the meeting with each student.
Who is involved?
My student mentees were involved, and I was as open and transparent about the data we held on them as I could be in the meeting.
How did you do it?
Before the meetings I would look at attendance data, Canvas activity, lecture capture usage and other engagement type statistics on the student’s modules they were studying as conversation prompts. Sometimes the data itself looked “wrong” in some way – for instance zero attendance on a module the student had previously said they were enjoying – and this usually prompted wider questions about remembering their library card, which an astonishing number of 18 year olds lose or forget quite regularly I’ve found.
I simply, on a notepad before our chat, spend 2-3 minutes going through a number of key indicators on the student dashboard, and then have my laptop ready at the desk just in case the student had any further queries.
Why did you do it?
I wanted to have more constructive conversations with my mentees about their engagement at University and the Student Dashboard data, and things like the Red/Amber/Green (RAG) indicators, helped at the very least to prompt conversation starters in different modules and directions. Sometimes our conversations with students in meetings can be very aimless “How are you doing?”-type affairs in which a student can easily through omittance or simple forgetfulness (our students are very forgetful I’ve found through this process – “oh yeah, I have not been attending that seminar.”) choose not to talk about. By using data from our side to prompt the conversation I found it much easier to have more directed and constructive conversations with the students.
Does it work?
These more directed student conversations seemed to prompt richer levels of discussions with mentees than I’d previously had. Students also seemed to appreciate that I was merely using the data as a conversation prompt but nothing more. It also uncovered specific issues quite quickly, for instance, I quickly found that someone had lost their library card or was extremely forgetful with it – and was able to direct them on how to replace it or have a chat about the importance of swiping in and so forth. It was also interesting to uncover disparities between what the student was saying and what the data was suggesting.
On a number of occasions a response to how a module was going would at first get “Yeah, it’s OK”-like responses, and then you could discuss with the student lack of attendance or Canvas interaction which would uncover and lead to conversations which probably wouldn’t have happened previously – for example a student avoiding a module’s seminars because none of their friends were in the seminar group they were scheduled for – which prompts further conversations.