DSI Charter
Project Name:
Retention/Graduation: Tracking Student Progress
Initial Target Audience: ☒ Public
Primary Contact:
Linda Shepard
☒ Department
Request Date:
4/22/2015
Click here to enter text.
Desired Completion Date:
☒ School
☒ University
☒ Group
☒ Campus
☐ Role
10/31/2015
Executive Sponsor: Todd Schmitz, Dennis Groth, and David Johnson
Product Owner: Linda Shepard, Doug Anderson and Michele Hansen
Functional Experts: Mike Sauer, Teresa Troke, Cheryl Stine, Steve Graunke, Bridgett
Product Owner Availability: yes
Milner, will involve Regional Campus Institutional Researchers
User Acceptance Tester(s): Mike Sauer, Teresa Troke, Cheryl Stine, Steve Graunke,
Bridgett Milner, will involve Regional Campus Institutional Researchers
Check to Acknowledge Sponsor and Owner will ensure Time Commitments for Experts/Testers for Agile Sprints: ☒
DSI Charter
Problem Statement
Essential to the business of educating students is tracking academic progress and defining pathways for student success. Pervasive throughout the IU and
Bloomington campus strategic plans are references to the retention of students and student success, so much so that a series of prescribed metrics are outlined
that necessitate foundational data sources that are standard across campuses, systematically maintained, with transparent and consistent methodologies. This
retention data repository would afford campuses, program directors and decision makers easy access to necessary information for benchmarking, policy and
program development, program evaluation and general research for decision support.
Currently, a robust repository of student data exists; however, a repository of data assembled for longitudinal analyses examining roadblocks for students,
monitoring academic progress, reporting basic retention rates by specific student attributes, etc. is not readily available. For these types of questions, data is
assembled in response to each inquiry. The student outcomes are standard, such as retention to first year, graduation within 4 years, time to degree completion
but, the data assembled to gather the metrics are not standard. We can do better! We should build a repository of student data assembled specifically for
tracking academic progress that is easy to access, has built-in definitions, and is used for standard reporting as well as special studies. This repository would
contain historical data and yet be flexible enough to accommodate updates each term, updates that would track student progression in subsequent years, or add
new students to the core data. Once the essential metrics (core data) are available, new modules of data would be linked to the core structure. For example
modules of RPS data could be linked to the core retention outcomes, such that comparing the retention rates of students in a learning community with those who
live off campus could be easily explored and made available year after year. More time would be spent analyzing and exploring data rather than compiling data.
Examples of Decisions to be Supported
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How can we best predict the successful pathways for students or identify students at risk?
What is the impact of early evaluation rosters or FLAGS on student records?
Now that I know the baseline retention rates of my students, how do students in our program fare when they are living in a thematic community?
What are some successful pathways for students who don’t get into Business or Nursing?
When do students discover our majors? Where do these students start?
What transfer institutions attract our students?
When do we lose some of our good students?
How many students choose our major after taking our intro course?
DSI Charter
Project Narrative
This project will develop a core data repository for tracking student progress toward degree completion. Core information consists of standard metrics such as
retention, continuous enrollment, degree completion as well as student attributes such as academic preparation, demographic information, campus, entry status.
Student academic progress can then be tracked for eight years (or time to be defined).
After the core tracking data has been assembled, modules of data that deal with financial aid, student housing, advising, national student clearinghouse (transfer
students), survey responses such as NSSE, coursework, student involvement in co-curricular activities, FLAGS data, interactions with the LMS, etc. can be linked to the
core data in a time-appropriate routine, sensitive to the data life-cycles that are meaningful for analysis purposes. A more thorough understanding of student
experiences can be explored, encompassing the many dimensions of student life.
In Scope
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Phase 1 Core Retention Tracking data structures: All (UG, GRAD, PROF) enrolled students for each major semester beginning with 2004. Most of the data for
the core infrastructure are available with the IR snapshots of data. What is needed is a mechanism for assembling the information as a longitudinal data set
for analysis and reporting. A query in SQR has been written that outlines the technical specifications and exemplifies the needed infrastructure. Evaluating
the SQR process for a 2015 solution and establishing sustainable/extensible infrastructure would be desirable. The data may need to be remodeled or new
Oracle views of longitudinal data configured to create infrastructure that will be able to provide desired functions. The next step will involve developing a
series of queries and reports that satisfy the basic research and reporting needs that will serve as the baseline for the on-going decision support. Modules of
data, such as, Student Activities, surveys, Residential Programs, will then be linked to the core retention infrastructure in a sustainable way.
DSI Charter
Excluded from Scope
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Collect additional data. Also exclude data not sufficiently mature enough for on-going updates to core data.
Project Metrics
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Evaluate existing technical specifications for a 2015 sustainable solution. Recommend replicating SQR in Perl or consider a new approach?
Develop core retention structure with all students for each campus, complete with student attributes upon entry to IU. Validate data by campus.
Develop tracking infrastructure for each major term following initial term. Validate data by campus and term
Define retention/graduation and consider inclusion of Clearinghouse data, validate metric by campus.
Develop a series of dashboards for data validation as well as tools to be used as informational, teaching individuals how to use the data
Develop data dictionary (similar to what has been developed for the IUIE report BL Retention)
Disseminate objects to campuses
Alignment with IU Bicentennial and Campus Strategic Plans (IU Bicentennial Strategic Plan)
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One doesn’t have to look far to see that Retention/Graduation/Student Success are important to the University
IU Bicentennial Priority One: A commitment to Student Success Action Item 1 , 2, 3, 5, 6 Bicentennial Priority Two: Action Items 1
IUB
Bicentennial Objective One 1 a, b, c, d, e 2, 3 a, b, c, 4, 5 IUB Bicentennial Objective two 2a, d, 3a, b, c, IUB Bicentennial Objective Four 1a, 2, 3. METRICS
include monitoring activities, increasing number of degrees and reduce time to degree. Also includes increased participation in high impact practices for
positive student outcomes. The data would lend itself to many data mining projects and be accessible to communities using learning analytics.