Archive for the ‘relationship management’ Category

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Student Progression: Smartcard Bursaries and the Students FIRST Project

Monday, October 15th, 2012

Photo of a brass compassThe JISC funded Students FIRST Project has been improving the use of bursary schemes for purchasing learning materials and other services at the University of East London and Anglia Ruskin University, in conjunction with AMOSSHE and John Smith’s Booksellers.

Challenges

The Students FIRST project pulled together a group of technologies - financial information app, bursary on a smarcard, and social messaging tools (texting) - to help improve progression and retention. However, there were some challenges in this approach:

  • technologies, such as smartcard or mobile apps, may be used in a “scattergun” approach and need to be part of a strategic service delivery
  • staff can be unwilling to engage with new technologies; for example, because they don’t want to remember additional logins
  • staff must be trained in the use of any new technologies, but it can be difficult to find the resource to do so.

Benefits

Access to the bursary is staggered according to student progression; i.e. a student must progress to the second year of their studies in order to receive the second installment. Students can then purchase from a list of products specified by their institution, such as books, art materials, nursery fees, campus accommodation, etc. Almost 74% of students surveyed at one university found that the bursary was beneficial. Other benefits include:

  • establishing a clear link between the spend on books and academic achievement
  • a targeted bursary encourages students to achieve and progress
  • such a bursary also equalises opportunity across the student body; for example, one student said “I have access to books that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to own and progress further”.

Recommendations

A collaborative approach to this project was taken with a mix of educational and commercial providers and this gave the project team the opportunity to draw up guidance materials on working across different sectors. Recommendations include:

  • taking a service design approach can help you to understand student needs, expose failpoints in service delivery, and build collaborative relationships between departments/institutions and providers
  • sharing data between institutions can be a cause for concern, so consider alternatives such as using separate hard drives to store data
  • actively engage with technologies with which students are familiar, such as mobile apps, to encourage engagement.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

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Alumni Engagement: Using Integrated Web Technologies at the University of Surrey

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe JISC funded Increasing Engagement and Value Using Integrated Web-Networking Technologies project at the University of Surrey has been putting together an online platform for delivering events to alumni.

Challenges

The project has used a combination of web, social media and integrated web-based technologies to help implement a cost-effective programme of events that would try and meet the following challenges:

  • the creation of mutually beneficial relationships between alumni and the University
  • improvement of the limited online opportunities for alumni with the institution
  • re-engaging with 25,000 alumni “missing” from the alumni database.

Benefits

The project developed a bespoke registration and booking platform for alumni events, set up an online version of the biannual alumni magazine, established social media channels (Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter) for communicating with alumni, and created a library of online events available for download. Benefits include:

  • supporting the recruitment of prospective students, if they are aware that there is an established professional international network of alumni
  • reduction of print costs associated with the hard copy alumni magazine, which can then be used for other aspects of alumni engagement
  • doubling of the number of Linked-In alumni group members since January 2011 by consolidating a number of disparate alumni groups into one official Surry Alumni Group with separate sub-groups.

Recommendations

When taking a technological approach to alumni engagement, the following should be considered:

  • do a full audit on any technologies that will be implemented to ensure that they don’t undermine the institution’s reputation; for example, Tinychat was used to deliver the first event, but it it soon became clear that it did not have a professional look-and-feel, nor was it compatible with a number of browsers or mobile devices
  • consider the timing and delivering of live events, particularly if a large number of international alumni (around a third of Surrey’s alumni are from outside the UK) to ensure that everyone is included
  • consider the sustainability of any web platform, e.g. is a five year shelf-life long enough?

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

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Student Retention: Student Dashboard at University of Southampton

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Photo of a brass compassThe JISC funded Southampton Student Dashboard Project at the University of Southampton has been aggregating data from across a number of systems and presenting it in a single place, so that pastoral tutors can provide better informed support for students.

Challenges

Data held by institutions is not always easy to access. For example:

  • data held across a number of systems only offers a partial or disjointed view of information that may be relevant to staff and students
  • multiple systems require multiple log-ins; for example, Student Services at Southampton need to switch between four different applications in order to amalgamate student information
  • selecting the data that tutors might need to see on a dashboard can be contentious; for example information from Finance or Student Counselling services.

Benefits

In common with other projects that have focussed on using data to identify “at risk” students, the project team identified the following benefits:

  • providing a complete view of an institution’s student data enables staff to identify any early signs of problems and possible non-progression
  • improving access to data can encourage the organisational culture to be more innovative and transparent
  • by allowing a small set of data to be shown to pastoral tutors, it is expected that this will generate requests for more data to be included.

Recommendations

Encouraging people to open up access to data can be challenging. Issues of data access and organisational culture can be difficult to handle, so try to:

  • manage change carefully to ensure that all stakeholders are engaged, especially those who have power to implement change and those who have influence over opinion in the institution
  • identify champions in each group of stakeholders, who will help drive through changes
  • find out what data is held by each stakeholder and how it is accessed (some of it may be paper-based) as this can help determine how that data could be accessed in a dashboard; it can also expose information that some stakeholders didn’t even know existed.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

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Student Retention: Mental Health at the University of Sheffield

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Photo of a brass compassThe DCSMH (Digital Communication and Student Mental Health) project at the University of Sheffield has created a website, Well Connected, which provides a library of self-help resources, a self-check facility, and social media functions for supporting students with mental health difficulties.

Challenges

Many HE (Higher Education) institutions are facing increased demand from students for mental health services. There are increasing numbers of students with complex difficulties, so the institution needs to be able to promote mental health support effectively. The challenges include:

  • students with mild difficulties may not be prioritised for face-to-face support whilst those with more severe difficulties do not always access the services provided
  • the area of mental health can be a sensitive topic for the institution, staff and students, which needs careful handling
  • increased demand for mental health services means that traditional face-to-face support is becoming severely stretched.

Benefits

The Well Connected website, which was co-created with students, has provided benefits for both staff and students:

  • non-clinical student support and academic staff feel more confident in their response to students with mental health difficulties
  • the site includes a validated online self-check or referral tool which may help students wary of contacting mental health support services to make the first step to getting help
  • using digital communications to keep students informed can relieve pressure on physical support services and provide a channel for communication messages of wellbeing, especially at particular times of the academic year.

Recommendations

During the project, feedback from students has shown that they favour digital media for finding out about mental health issues. However,

  • don’t underestimate the strength of institutional branding and authority; for example because the Well Connected website has the University’s stamp of approval, students feel that they can rely on it and that it can be trusted
  • ensure that training is put in place for support staff in the use of any online resources
  • although online support resources can relieve some of the pressure on face-to-face support staff, remember that there will be additional work required in the support and maintenance of an online resource and in managing communication campaigns.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

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Student Retention: Project fulCRM at Roehampton University

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

Photo of a brass compassProject fulCRM, funded by JISC, at Roehampton University has brought together two existing processes, one technical and one manual, in order to reduce the number of students leaving their course early.

Challenges

The initial challenges faced by the project team included:

  • over 2000 mitigating circumstances requests were made each year by students in the University, which were all handled manually
  • lack of consistency in the way in which mitigating circumstances were handled, which was a cause for student concern
  • data formats that are not designed to integrate with other applications.

Benefits

Two existing processes (a spreadsheet-based Early Warning System of lack of attendance and other indicators and the manual process of applying for mitigating circumstances) have been improved by taking a technological approach. This has resulted in a number of benefits for staff and students alike, including:

  • improved communication by ensuring that students are kept informed via e-mail of the progress of the mitigating circumstances process
  • flagging up of students who need additional support
  • automated data collection which has replaced complex and time-consuming activities and reduced staff workload.

Recommendations

Students now feel that the technological improvements provide them with a safety net and they will also be able to view their performance alongside their tutor. However, arriving at this stage has not been easy and the following suggestions may help:

  • in order to gain acceptance across a number of disparate Departments, ensure that any system can cater for the creation of different student performance indicators
  • if data (such as data relating to the number of times a student accesses a VLE) is held in the cloud, accessing that data and moving it across to private university servers may pose a security risk, therefore additional servers with secure links direct to the VLE may need to be built
  • do not underestimate the amount of manipulation required to access complex data which is often housed in various disparate systems.

Further Information

If you would like to find out more about this project, the following resources may help:

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