KUL prioritise their student’s welfare.

Attendance data and engagement analytics have driven Kingston’s welfare and widening participation strategies and empowered their new holistic approach to student engagement.

The Challenge

In 2017, a central system was sought that would capture student attendance and engagement data, with a focus on student welfare and providing a greater understanding of the student journey. The goal was to ensure students have timely access to the support they need to get them back on track, leading to improved retention and progression outcomes at the University.

Objectives:

• Develop a central student monitoring system that would capture and record relevant student data in one place
• Ensure timely intervention/communication with students who are unengaged
• Accurately monitor student engagement online as well as in-person

The Solution

SEAtS Attendance and Engagement Analytics aim to find out how students are learning, to optimise teaching delivery and identify where your student support services are needed most. At KUL, these solutions were implemented to support student access, participation and inclusion and to achieve better retention, continuation and progression aims.

Some of the ways in which these solutions have worked for KUL:

• 5 stage workflows automate communication processes and provide a clear visual of student progression
• Learning analytics combines in-person attendance data and VLE online data to ensure that all student engagement is captured
• UKVI monitoring ensures international students are meeting their visa attendance requirements
• Connecting student engagement data to demographic data enables a holistic approach to student engagement
• Generating useful data for countless teams across the University including registry, apprenticeships, compliance, funding and student services

The Impact

The data from SEAtS Attendance and Engagement Analytics has provided KUL with an invaluable insight into the needs of their students, adding student success metrics in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Since implementing SEAtS, KUL has been able to:

• Put in place proactive support for repeating and late enrolling students
• Devote additional hybrid learning resources for commuter students
• Provide effective support to students who are disengaging or falling behind
• Engage proactively with students from areas/localities that need extra support

The SEAtS Platform has allowed academics and professional staff at Kingston to “close the loop” when supporting students.