- Our non-cognitive research is going well. Preliminary results based on one semester's grades indicate that a non-cog survey has the potential to add information to the usual enrollment inputs. We'll have much better data in the fall, with a whole year of grades and year-to-year retention data.
- We built and launched an early alert system for tracking student who have academic difficulty early in the semester. It's in the testing phase right now.
- We're developing a new web site, and one of the most important, and (to all appearances) ignored sections is the description of academic programs. We're spending a large effort there to develop superb pages that will sell programs to students. Stay tuned. Our Google Analytics shows that these are the most frequented pages by outside visitors. Not surprising, since academics is the product a university sells.
- I've done a lot of development on reporting FACS scores. There is now a self-serve site to generate reports by term, program, or class. This week I added the ability to drill down to the individual student level, for use by advisors. Here's an example:
The red lines and bars show where this second year student is performing relative to other students, based on faculty assessments from the prior semester. At at glance you can see that this student is performing well below par, and according to professors is also not putting forth effort at the same level as peers. The sample sizes are necessarily small (although they will increase as the assessment becomes institutionalized). Note, however, that all three raters agreed that creative thinking was demonstrated at the pre-college "developmental" level.
Off to the Southern Education Foundation today to attend an assessment meeting in San Antonio.
