Across the sector, we continue to see growth in attempts to implement data-led solutions to support improved student wellbeing, outcomes, and experience.
The creation of data dashboards helps bring together the diverse information we hold about our students, and enables us to share this with staff. Learner analytics approaches go further, and allow institutions to start using existing data to make predictions about future behaviour and support needs – such as targeting those at risk of non-continuation, or identifying when there might be concerns about student wellbeing.
At London South Bank University, as part of the implementation of a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform we have been developing our own approach to the use of student data. This has been a fascinating and transformational journey.
Our approach began at the level of an individual student, and reflected on the question of how we can ensure that students really could feel more seen, known, and understood by our organisation. Equally, we wanted to connect this insight back to the ways in which we help our students to develop, and support them in particular times of need – in such a way that students really would feel that when they share information with us, it genuinely informs what we do next. To turn this into reality, we involved students and staff in a co-creation project which led to the development of our Integrated Student Development Framework.
