Aston University, founded in 1895, with its roots firmly in industry and the local economy, was awarded Gold in the Government’s Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in 2017. The University has a long history of delivering outstanding education for its students, and teaching a diverse body of students the skills required for them to thrive in business and the professions.
Aston University has appointed UK based Digital Engagement Learner Analytics specialist Solutionpath to partner with the University on an initiative which will provide greater insight into how students engage with life on campus. The University will use Solutionpath’s StREAM software platform (to be branded MyEngagement at Aston) to provide data on activities including their use of online learning tools, reading lists, coursework submission and attendance, and use StREAM in support of a range of better outcomes including student attainment and student wellbeing, and also student retention.
Professor Helen Higson, Provost and Deputy Vice Chancellor, said:
“Aston University prides itself on its diverse student population, high rates of graduate employability, and strong relationships with business and local industry for placements, collaborative research and training courses. As such, we wanted to work with a partner with a proven track record, who could implement a learner analytics platform with the most important people in mind, our students, and our personal academic tutors.”
“The benefits we expect from this project for our students include; better engagement with personal tutors, early alerts to identify students who require additional support well before any crisis point is reached, which will improve the personal tutor support offerings at Aston, as well as the provision and utilisation of data to support a student’s learning journey. We also hope to better understand the learning behaviours of students at Aston, and develop an intelligence picture for the future that will help the University shape policy and service offerings and provision.”
“Aston has historically had a below average student drop-out rate and so our decision to embark on this project with Solutionpath has been with the explicit intention of providing a support and nudge tool that will help us drive those marginal gains that can make all the difference to our learners and their academic outcomes.”
Catherine Foster, Senior Project Manager, explained why Aston University decided to partner with Solutionpath on their journey:
“The commitment to creating a truly collaborative community of users was one major factor in our decision-making process. Learning from other Solutionpath community Universities at different stages in their journey has helped us shape our approach to the implementation, adoption and ultimately the success of Learner Analytics at Aston. The shared learnings have been invaluable. We have introduced a soft launch of the solution focusing on encouraging students to use the data reflflectively and to improve their own learning behaviours. Secondly we are encouraging personal tutors to use the data to enhance their conversations and their own engagement with their tutees.”
David Cole Commercial Director of Solutionpath said:
“We are extremely proud and excited to be working with Aston University, from ours and our community of universities experience we know that driving adoption, and deriving real value is the number one challenge for Learner Analytics projects. There is certainly no shortage of well-meaning people doing clever things with data in the sector without any real idea of how they will benefit from the technology at scale, therefore having the opportunity to work with such a diverse but collaborative group of universities is proving to be one of the most important factors in helping Solutionpath to help universities on their own journeys to be successful using these technologies.”
If you would like to hear more about Solutionpath’s growing community of users, or have a guided tour of the StREAM software and see what it could do for your institution, please do not hesitate to contact us at hello@solutionpath.co.uk
To find out more about the work we are doing with Learning Analytics across the UK’s Higher Education sector, read another community case study.
