Do You Have the Tools to Improve Student Success?

The education environment we encountered in our childhood is very different from the one in which we work today whether as an instructor, administrator, or a support staff member. Student success is usually the result of a gradual learning and teaching improvement process. In order to reach a well-rounded learning experience, the process must encompass a range of methods both inside and outside the classroom.

That’s why as educators, we need to constantly be asking ourselves whether the tools we are using match the demands of the modern educational ecosystem and the needs of our students – all this without getting overwhelmed by the additional burdens placed on teaching staff today.

Some of the trends that impact student success include:

• Multi-stakeholder feedback. We most commonly receive feedback from students, but education as a whole involves many more stakeholders: faculty members, alumni, governmental policy makers, support staff, corporate and private donors, and even future employers. Tapping into these other feedback sources can provide you with a holistic view of the learning process and help identify ways to improve it.
• Multi-measurement tools. It’s no longer enough to just evaluate knowledge. We must also assess need fulfilment, skill development, competencies, and satisfaction levels. This means diversifying the range of measurement tools and techniques we use, well beyond end-of-term course evaluations.
• Iterative improvement processes. Improvement doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a continuous process that is best thought of not as a straight line, but as a constant cycle of improvement.
• Changing student attitudes. Growing up in the 21st century, millennial students have different expectations than those of 10 or 20 years ago. Some of these traits include a more social, group-oriented attitude to education and a desire to be consulted and included in decision making, rather than dictated to. Understanding how to harness these traits is key to unlocking student success.

At Explorance, we created the Blue and Bluepulse solutions with all of these aspects in mind, based on a student success framework called Learning Experience Management (LEM). Blue is a summative assessment system that makes use of a variety of tools – course evaluations, institutional surveys, 360 degree reviews, advisor assessments and many more – all integrated in one place into the Canvas LMS interface (see sample screenshot below). Bluepulse is a live formative feedback platform that enables real-time communication, creating an interactive environment for unstructured feedback that will be valuable for teachers, and also feel intuitive for today’s digital native students.

To put it another way, Bluepulse is geared towards continuous assessment during the learning process, while Blue is used to evaluate learning, skill acquisition and academic achievement at the end of a defined instructional period. That means that teachers who use the two in combination get the timely feedback necessary to modify teaching and learning activities on the fly during term time, gradually leading them to achieve the teaching and learning goals at the end-of-term assessments.

It’s a powerful combination which we hope will allow you to improve teacher and student success. For more information, consult the Learning Experience Management.