Two tools developed by Penn State IT’s Data Empowered Learning team are helping academic advisers and instructors proactively support students using data that was once scattered across multiple systems.

Elevate, designed for academic advisers, and Course Insights, for instructors, provide actionable information to those at Penn State who interact with students the most. Using these tools, academic advisers and instructors can easily see when a student on their roster isn’t engaging with coursework, allowing interventions to happen before a student gets too far behind.

The creation of Elevate and Course Insights from the Data Empowered Learning team began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as staff and faculty raced to move the entire University to remote learning in the spring and summer of 2020.

“That’s where a lot of this originated, at the start of the pandemic,” said David Smith, executive director of the Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) and associate dean for advising. “We needed to be proactive in reaching out to students who might not have been able to make the transition to remote learning. And we’ve grown it from there significantly.”

DUS and the Data Empowered Learning team began working together to create a tool that would give academic advisers the information they needed and present it in a way that it was easy to see where intervention could be helpful. Later, the Data Empowered Learning team turned their attention to Course Insights for instructors, built right into Canvas. A central feature of both tools allows academic advisers and instructors to view the aggregated Canvas activity (but not specific actions) charted against a seven-day average for the entire class. This provides some insight into whether a student is engaging in the course at the same times and rates as their peers.

…One of the other core features for Course Insights is the aggregation of demographics, class standing, cumulative GPA, and other data points that summarize the population of students enrolled in a course. Ben Hellar, manager of Data Empowered Learning, said his team focuses on providing data to the instructors and academic advisers who work daily with students to support their academic success.

…Sometimes an Elevate alert can uncover situations when a student is facing a major obstacle in their life outside the classroom.

“The other thing that’s nice,” Petrosky said, “is I can use Elevate to see which students on my roster have kind of ‘zeroed out’ in terms of meaningful class participation. In fall of 2020, I had a student that zeroed out. And, sure enough, he had COVID, and he was isolated and wasn’t doing anything.”

…Even if a student doesn’t directly respond to progress survey concerns raised by an instructor or outreach by an academic adviser, Smith said sometimes they see an uptick in Canvas activity for that student, which indicates they have at least heeded the outreach and are working to improve.

While Elevate and Course Insights were designed with the same goal in mind — proactive outreach and intervention to students who may be struggling in their courses — academic advisers and instructors each have access to different information to protect student privacy and comply with national FERPA laws.

Read more:

Yoder, S. (2024, March 10). Learning analytics tools show engagement in courses, personalize support. Penn State News. https://www.psu.edu/news/office-undergraduate-education/story/learning-analytics-tools-show-engagement-courses-personalize/