Category Archives: SLRM

Student Progression: ESCAPES Project at the University of Nottingham

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Photo of a brass compassThe JISC funded ESCAPES (Enhancing Student Centred Administration for Placement ExperienceS) project at the University of Nottingham has focussed on improving the management of its placement process for both staff and students. As employers are more likely to take on graduates with work experience, students may be more likely to choose a course that has a placement element.

Challenges

The relationships between teaching staff, administrative staff, students and businesses are an essential part of effective placement management. Challenges from the institution’s viewpoint included:

  • a variety of unconnected processes used across the institution
  • finding a way to ensure that common good practice was recorded and shared
  • being able to record baseline placement data for employability statistics without imposing any centralised control across schools.

Benefits

As well as some technological improvements, the project has resulted in a number of benefits for both staff and students, including:

  • improved adminstrative efficiency from streamlining processes and extra facilities for data reporting; for example, it is now possible to identify students who make a number of unsuccessful placement applications in order to provide them with additional support
  • more effective management of relationships with students whilst they are on placement; such as providing a single point of contact and improved methods of communication
  • a number of enthusastic champions of good practice across the University have been identified as a result of the project.

Recommendations

For placement processes to be handled effectively, it is recommended that:

  • senior management and practitioners are encouraged to be champions in good practice for placements with the role of a placement co-ordinator acting as a central conduit for relationships and communication
  • when implementing such a project, staff need to “talk to people on their terms” to win them over and to promote an understanding of what people are doing and why; communication is key and can help enable “change by stealth”
  • remember that the learning and administrative aspects of the placement process are co-dependent and that technology alone cannot replace the human element.

Further Information

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

Come and chat about CRM on our new list!

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Team of people sitting together We’ve just started a new JISCMail Discussion List for anyone who wants to talk about CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in the HE (Higher Education) and FE (Further Education) sectors.

The CRMinHEFE list is a space for all stakeholders to discuss the implementation of CRM as a process and as a technology. It’s focus is on the strategic, cultural change, systems management, etc aspects of CRM, rather than on the detailed installation issues of vendor specific systems.

If you’re using the JISC Good Practice in Customer Relationship Management Online Handbook, then you can talk about that here too. There’s also a short blog post about the Handbook.

If you’re looking for a more generic Relationship Management list or one that focuses more on SLRM (Student Lifecycle Relationship Management), then our sister list RMinHEFE might be more your style.

Other resources include the Just Enough Relationship Management website with a section on BCE (Business and Community Engagement) CRM, the JISC CETIS Relationship Management website as well as the #rminhe Twitter tag.

So come and join us!

Student Retention: Support for All Project at North Glasgow College

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Photo of a brass compassThe JISC funded Support for All project at North Glasgow College has been trying to improve access to learner support, both on and off-campus. This project is based at an FE (Further Education) College, which tends to face different issues fro those faced by HE (Higher Education) colleagues.

Challenges

The project team team has tried to formalise the thought processes and relationships regarding provision of support and identified a number of challenges, including:

  • developments in the real-world can get ahead of institutional strategy; e.g. there are issues around allowing the College to use Facebook
  • the lack of strategy around the introduction of new technologies, such as iPads
  • changes in personnel can affect any improvements being made.

Benefits

The project team established several new approaches to improve access to student support, including:

  • a structured and auditable “pipeline of support” through which learners can move; the ten steps in this process can be used as a checklist for performance evaluation of the support offered
  • a Blackboard mobile app was implemented, alongside access to iPads, in order to extend access to support. This not only gives students access to learning content but also allows the learner to submit medical self-certification forms electronically
  • these improvements should lead to increased student confidence, performance and retention.

Recommendations

When tackling improvements at a time when resources are scarce, it can be helpful to:

  • give staff responsible for delivering a service the chance to take ownership of any activities leading to process improvement
  • encourage staff to complete bite-sized activities so that they are not taken away from day-to-day operations, as this may reduce resentment to any new methods of working
  • make small improvements, even if resources are scarce. For example, whilst social media services, such as Facebook, were seen as positive ways to interact with support services by students, staff resources weren’t available at the College to manage this. The project team addressed this issue by designing postcards with QR codes, so that students can get immediate access via their smartphone to the support team’s e-mail.

Further Information

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

MOOCs and Carrots

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Photo of a bunch of carrots

I’ve just started a free online Coursera course on HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). This is my first time taking an online course and I thought I’d share some of my observations on both the course and on using a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).

The HCI course is being run by Stanford University and consists of a number of short video lectures, peer-evaluated assignments and online quizzed. There is a student forum, free access to software to help with the course, and lots of text and videos to support the general interaction with the course.

The first thing that struck me about the HCI course itself was how much it will complement my existing work as an e-learning technologist in the accessibility field, as well as there being similarities with the service design approach, which has been part of my Relationship Management work. In fact, there are quite a number of e-learning technologists on the course.

The second thing that really stood out was the wide variety of the types of people from around the world taking the course. Apart from the obvious – students taking this course as a complement to their main study and people in employment upgrading or complementing their existing skills – there are mothers with young children, housebound people, people with disabilities, people who don’t live anywhere near an educational institution that offers such a course, unemployed people, etc. These are very much non-traditional students who would be unable to attend a class in a traditional setting. Perhaps the rise in MOOCs won’t necessarily threaten the current university sector but will complement it by attracting those on the fringes of mainstream education?

There are some differences between attending an educational institution as a real student and as a virtual student. Perhaps the biggest one might be the social and collaborative aspect. If one is motivated to attend class for social reasons (e.g. seeing a different group of people, doing something outside of the normal day-to-day routine, etc), then one may be more likely to continue. However, no-one is going to notice if one hasn’t attended a virtual class! Perhaps one way to encourage attendance in online classes to offer a carrot. In the case of the HCI class, students who successfully complete the course will be awarded a “statement of accomplishment” signed by the tutor and there are grade penalties if you miss assignments or don’t take part in peer evaluation. Not all classes offer this, so it will be interesting to know whether offering a sort of certificate really makes a difference to drop-out rates. If I manage to make it to the end, I’ll let you know!

Carrots photo by vierdrie.

Student Retention: Learner Analytics at Loughborough University

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Photo of a brass compassThe JISC funded Pedestal for Progression project at Loughborough University has focussed on bringing together information from their in-house Co-Tutor dashboard and other systems to help tutors be pro-active in their response to “at risk” students.

Challenges

The project team found that having access to the data is not enough, there needs to be a balance between automated and human interventions, for example:

  • educational data mining is complex and will be unsuccessful if used solely to identify “at risk” students without human intervention processes being designed
  • incorporating more student-centred approaches into the development of exisiting systems (such as VLEs, student data systems, attendance recording systems etc) can be challenging
  • changes in processes and the introduction of new software systems can be seen as threatening to staff.

Benefits

The project team looked at both staff and student needs by:

  • using service design techniques to help identify learner needs, such as flexibility of study, planning of deadlines for coursework, and employability, for example
  • providing more and better quality learner information to help a tutor be more active in identifying and supporting “at risk” students; for example teaching sessions where attendance is taken electronically are designated as being “critical” or not, so e-mails are sent only to students missing “critical” sessions
  • developing a standardised process for managing placements across three departments in order to reduce student anxiety around the process.

Recommendations

The relationships that students have with staff are vital to the enhancement of the student experience, but the relationships that staff have within in the organisation are also important. For example:

  • provide staff with access to learner data to help them identify any human interventions that need to be made
  • use the student voice to influence improvements
  • sincere management buy-in is critical, otherwise an institution’s organisational structure will remain a barrier no matter what improvements are suggested.

Further Information

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

Alumni Engagement: Using PDP at University of Kent

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsPDP (Personal Development Planning) is generally done whilst a student is still studying. The EAT-PDP (Engaging Alumni Through Personal Development Planning) project at the University Kent looked at the benefits of extending access to their PDP software (Mahara) to alumni.

Challenges

The aim of the project was to extend access to Myfolio (based on the Mahara software) to alumni for at least a year. It also developed a Student Catalogue which will help prospective employers search the University’s alumni (with their permission). Some of the challenges include:

  • the difficulty in ascertaining the impact on data storage and server usage; for example although not all students are active on MyFolio, and only 25% of users are in their final year, uptake may increase as users start to see the benefits
  • data protection issues
  • providing access to a University branded platform once a student has graduated could damage the institution’s reputation, i.e. it is harder to sanction alumni than current students.

Benefits

The University wanted to offer practical assistance to the ongoing development of its graduates, particularly those who wanted to continue to record and reflect on their acheivements. Providing access to a PDP service after a student has graduated can:

  • help the institution’s reputation by improving the employability of graduates
  • provide alumni with a competitive edge in a difficult employment market
  • extend the relationship between the institution and the alumni to mutual benefit, e.g. by helping a graduate find employment, who could then mentor current students.

Recommendations

Prior to the EAT-PDP project, alumni were offered little formal guidance. However, when allowing alumni to use an instititutional platform:

  • give the user full control and ownership, e.g. by providing the ability to privately record self-reflection or publicly publishing profiles for potential employers to view
  • put procedures in place around the data archiving and deletion, especially if it’s no longer possible to contact the creator of the data
  • ensure that terms and conditions of service take alumni into account, especially if access to data is only available for a short time after graduation.

Further Information

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

Alumni Engagement: Forming an Alumni Community at the University of Hertfordshire

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe Alumni Link project at the University of Hertfordshire has been connecting alumni and students using online and offline activities. This can help generate employment opportunities, skills development, relationship building and mentoring.

Challenges

Alumni engagement has been viewed traditionally as an additional service once a student has graduated. In order to progress to a service that was more integrated with the student lifecycle, the following challenges needed to be addressed by the project:

  • building collaborative relationships with a range of different stakeholders, such as alumni, career development and business engagement services
  • growing an online community using LinkedIn, which generally has low uptake amongst students and recent graduates (also see the post on Brunel University’s Alumni Engagement project)
  • creating a framework for continuing to support and grow an alumni community that is sustainable.

Benefits

Alumni services are now taking on a more strategic role in the University and the subject-specific communities are starting to grow and take shape. For example:

  • there have been changes in policy, such as opening the University’s alumni group to final year students
  • engagement in the University’s LinkedIn groups has increased between 84% and 193%, depending on the group
  • Business School alumni have formed a committee for collaborating with staff and running alumni activities.

Recommendations

Being an active member of an alumni community can benefit students (such as mentoring, etc), alumni (e.g. building professional relationships, etc) and the institution (in terms of reputational benefits). Therefore:

  • a strategy should be developed for engaging alumni via online and offline activities that is co-ordinated; if departments set up independent alumni groups, this fragments the institution’s offering and reputation, should they be abandoned or lack support
  • it is important to consider that different types of alumni have different needs, for example recent graduates are more interested in finding employment, whilst retired alumni are more interested in events being run by the University
  • the institution needs to actively be involved in building alumni communities (e.g. by employing an Alumni Engagement Officer).

Further Information

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

Alumni Engagement: Alumni Volunteering at University of Glasgow

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsThe University of Glasgow’s SAVE (Sustainable Alumni Volunteer Engagement) Project has focussed on putting into place an alumni volunteering management infrastructure using existing systems that is both sustainable and engaging.

Challenges

The initial perception in the institution was that alumni volunteering opportunities weren’t adequately defined or managed. For example,

  • there was no consistent link between students and alumni
  • the process of volunteer engagement needed to be clearer and easier to follow
  • expressions of interest in volunteering weren’t recorded in a way that could be queried or reported.

Benefits

The SAVE project has helped improve the institution’s level of service by:

  • extending the range of alumni volunteering activities; for example by encouraging alumni to create online Alumni Profiles describing their time at the University, as well as asking them to act as eMentors to current students via LinkedIn
  • building clearer, formalised procedures for managing volunteering and establishing a coherent management structure to ensure sustainability
  • improving co-operation and co-ordination between University services; for example as a result of student feedback, the Careers Service now markets itself more efficiently to students.

Recommendations

The profile of alumni volunteering has been raised as a result of the SAVE project and many lessons have been learnt, such as:

  • the service design approach should be adopted from the beginning to ensure that any service improvements are user-centred
  • an alumni community should be grown gradually by identifying small target groups to ensure sustainability and build meaningful relationships
  • it’s important to manage expectations regarding alumni volunteering, i.e. not all alumni will be suitable for every opportunity; however all enthusiastic alumni should be encouraged.

Further Information

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

Student Retention: Engagement Analytics at University of Derby

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Photo of a brass compassThe University of Derby has been scoping early indicators (engagement analytics) for spotting students at risk of withdrawing in their SETL (Student Experience Traffic Lighting) project.

Challenges

Institutions generally hold a vast array of data about students, often in different systems which are not always interoperable. The data challenges experienced in this project include:

  • predisposing factors, such as responsibility as a carer, means that students are more likely to withdraw from their studies, however it’s not always possible to capture this type of data as it’s not generally held in any IT system
  • there is little interoperability between different data systems; for example, the data required to populate an engagement dashboard is held in at least seven different systems at the University
  • each student is an individual who brings with them individual challenges to succeeding at and engaging with higher education

Benefits

Scoping out the type of data to be included in a dashboard of core engagement data:

  • means that staff would be able to view a student’s level of engagement with the institution; for example, linking data on absences, access to the library and the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) could help a tutor see if the student was still engaging in the course, even if they were absent due to illness
  • has produced a change of thinking in the way students at risk of withdrawing will be supported at the University; i.e. it will be more proactive than reactive
  • has helped staff identify key points in the student lifecycle where students are most likely to be at risk of withdrawal.

Recommendations

Engagement analytics goes beyond the hard data recorded in learning analytics, because:

  • it’s dangerous to make decisions about student engagement based solely on a set of data, as understanding the context of the data is important and developing the relationship between the tutor and student is essential
  • both staff and students find it useful to have their own customisable engagement dashboards
  • soft data that can’t always be found on institutional systems should also be recorded and considered.

Further Information

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

Engaging Alumni: ALERT at Brunel University

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Photo of graduates wearing mortar boards and gownsBrunel University’s “ALERT (Alumni Growth and Engagement across New Technologies)” project has been exploring the use of social networking technologies to provide e-mentoring between alumni and undergraduates as a means to improve employability.

Challenges

The main challenges relate to the difference in the use of social networking technologies by alumni and students:

  • students are hesitant to join LinkedIn and are more likely to belong to Facebook
  • alumni in employment are more likely (95% of the Brunel sample) to belong to LinkedIn and prefer to use LinkedIn rather than Facebook for e-mentoring
  • the uptake of professional business-oriented services is low amongst undergraduates
  • alumni were not mentioned as a source of advice (employability or career development) during the customer journey mapping exercise.

Benefits

Strengthening ties between alumni and their institution by encouraging engagement with current students can help:

  • provide a sense of belonging and reinforce positive feelings for both alumni and students
  • build mutually beneficial relationships, which improves business and community engagement
  • improve student skills and employability; for example demonstrating the value of creating a LinkedIn profile can raise student awareness around self-reflection and self-marketing
  • bring together staff from across the University
  • improve the student experience.

Recommendations

Alumni engagement has a lot to offer in terms of knowledge exchange, relationship building, skills development etc. In order to build the relationship between students and alumni, the project discovered that:

  • engaging alumni should begin as early as possible in the student lifecycle, e.g. by inviting alumni to talk to prospective students
  • it should be made clear to participants how they can contribute and gain from services, such as LinkedIn
  • specific LinkedIn groups (e.g. subject-specific groups) should be established rather than a single university entity, as students prefer to belong to a particular group
  • LinkedIn can be seen as a safe place that supports both students and alumni and this “electronic handshake” can help to build trust within relationships.

Further Information

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