Educational intelligence is touted as a way to address retention on all levels.
[1]A new report has identified “educational intelligence” as a way to take a holistic view of student retention and student success based on efforts to leverage data to recruit, enroll, retain, graduate, and employ students.
Eduventures created the term “educational intelligence” (EI) to help make sense of a variety of retention solutions available today, many of which connect siloed data assets across the student lifecycle in different departments.
Specifically, EI refers to the “leveraging data at multiple points across the student lifecycle to make intelligent decisions to positively impact student
outcomes.”
When it comes to retention, the report outlines three areas where EI will focus:
- A holistic view of retention and student success that takes into account a continuous effort to leverage data to recruit, enroll, retain, graduate, and employ students.
- A superset of concepts, tools, and methodologies to evaluate the effectiveness of educational outcomes, including solutions for enrollment, student success, career readiness, and enterprise retention support.
- A set of metrics and key performance indicators that are collected, assessed, and defined in vastly different ways for each stage of the student lifecycle and for different stakeholders focused on retention.
“EI allows traditionally siloed stakeholders from across the institution, including faculty, staff, administrators, and even students, to come together in support of improving student outcomes,” said Max Woolf, Eduventures’ Senior Analyst for Online Education research and the author of the study. “We see potential impacts ranging from increased overall retention rates within specific programs to improved hiring by employer of best-fit students. This framework can significantly change the game when it comes to improving the outcomes of the educational process.”
This report is the first in a series of reports presenting strategies for considering data integration across the entire student lifecycle to support student retention.
Material from a press release was used in this report.