Technology is the center of all conversation on how to make higher education more affordable, more accessible and more engaging to a wide range of students. But finding the right technology to meet the fit for a campus size, mission and expectation is a difficult standard to meet.
Education Dive searched for success stories throughout a range of institutions to deliver some of the best technologies available in higher education.
Retention Analytics
EAB Student Success Collaborative
Billed as a ‘one-stop shop’ for academic performance monitoring and resource allocation, the SSC gives faculty advisors and retention specialists a common dashboard to view performance, and to easily direct students to tutoring and mentoring opportunities based on specific data sets.
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Campus Feedback: “Our persistence rates have increased by five percentage points since we’ve launched the technology, we have 80 advisors working in the platform, and It’s a great way to glean quick actionable intelligence on students, even as they are sitting in front of you." - Brian Hinote, Associate Professor & Program Coordinator Health Care Informatics; Middle Tennessee State University
Utilizing connectivity between email clients and text messaging, Starfish enables faculty advisors and other professors to easily set-up appointments and to receive alerts about academic underperformance, non-declaration of major, and to provide notes and badges of encouragement to improving students.
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Campus Feedback: “Our adoption of the Starfish platform has furthered our commitment to student success and we enjoyed an extremely successful first-year implementation… [The Starfish platform] has created an additional layer of support and communication that enables us to remain student-centered and let students know, in real time, that we care deeply about their success.” - Peter P. Mercer, President, Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Learning Management Systems
Canvas
Allows coursework submission and grading, in a user database which provides analytics on course material engagement, customized messaging and mobile integration.
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Campus Feedback: “Students love accessing all of their course materials in one spot, and our faculty are particularly pleased with the efficiency of assignment submission and grading. In fact, with those things so easy, many faculty are exploring and using features and tools they've never used before, reshaping their pedagogical approach.” - Tom Lewis, Director, Academic & Collaborative Applications, University of Washington
The system offers competency-based education and adaptive learning modules, and provides students access to performance analytics and faculty with video or other course engagement tools. The system also customizes course content to accommodate students with learning disabilities.
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Campus Feedback - “We processed 56 videos and the captioning was 100% perfect. And it was really smooth and painless. The Automatic Sync team was able to turnaround fully captioned, highly accurate videos in just three days. The process was quick, seamless and very, very efficient." - Rebecca Graetz, Instructional Designer, Inver Hills Community College.
Gamification
The system allows professors to instantly poll students with lecture-based questions, launch competitive quizzes, and timed lessons to engage students from start to finish in a range of subjects. The platform also offers grading and analytics report production.
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Campus Feedback: While used more widely in secondary education, Socrative offers a pro version for higher education and enterprises implementation.
A platform generally used for learning management, Moodle also offers plugins to encourage student achievement with ‘level-up’ badging for repetitive learning and academic achievement in courses.
- Campus Feedback: “The gamification module that was created encouraged mentoring and learner to learner collaboration, adaptability to diverse student learning styles, and increased engagement from students and faculty members.” - Edwin Lindsay, Teaching Assistant, Professor of Sport Management in Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, North Carolina State University
