The impact of COVID-19 on your StREAM Engagement Score
Further to our recent communications, the onset of COVID-19 and the critical need to maintain social distancing significantly impact students’ abilities to perform the activities that were previously part of their day to day studies. This has the natural impact of a reduction in the student’s overall engagement at the university, particularly on-campus activity. The level of this impact will differ from university to university.
What has Solutionpath been doing to review this situation?
As each university has different data points to measure ‘engagement’ and different implementations of different systems all with locally tuned algorithms, we have been analysing the data across all clients to see if we can put in place some short-term measures to ensure engagement is still maintained.
The key challenge in measuring engagement
The main areas of impact are attendance, library access and loans, access records (swipes) and print, and for some institutions, this represents a large part of their custom algorithm.
The tests and potential solutions
To this end, we have been modelling scenarios in our StREAM Data Foundry analytical system to identify a quick way of turning this around. We see that if we increase the weighting on any available online activities that we can level out some of the change from losing other data sources. These systems include VLE Login; both mobile and PC, VLE Courses, eResources and/or e Journals, Video lecture capture, PC Logins and various others.
The more online resources that are available to StREAM the more level the scoring becomes.
With the above information in mind we are now offering a couple of simple options to our clients:
1. Leave the algorithm as it stands and assess later
Due to the time of year, many universities typically see a slowdown in campus activity. You may choose to leave the algorithm the same to ensure consistency across the academic year and wait until closer to September before deciding how you wish to change engagement monitoring.
If you chose this route, we strongly recommend you communicate to students that you are aware of the impact and for them not to be concerned if they see a drop in their engagement.
Action: Ensure you communicate with all students and staff the impact on the engagement score from reduced on-campus activities.
2. Increase your online resources
If you have a good collection of online resources as part of your algorithm doubling up the score will allow your students to interact and get increased weighting for their activity. This has the effect of keeping students in higher categories and not falling into very low or none (if you have this category) engagement categories. While this is not as statistically relevant due to several factors (i.e. we don’t have one year of data on the way students will interact during this period). It will still show for students who are actively accessing the VLE and other online resources a higher engagement level now that attendance is not a factor enabling your operational process to support accordingly.
Action: To discuss in further detail progression with this approach, please raise a ticket within the service desk and state the following
“Please progress a request to evaluate our algorithm due to COVID-19”
Following receipt of this ticket, we will contact you to arrange a conversation to discuss the changes we would seek to make before making any changes to your algorithm.
3. Working together: A user forum
We are working with some universities to better understand how the students’ interaction is adjusting to this unprecedented situation.
We know as a user community you will be implementing activity using our software to support your distance learning activities. We would love it if you would share those experiences. Whereby you are looking for guidance and knowledge share about other institutional activities this is also a good place to get answers.
To facilitate the discourse, we are a dedicated Microsoft™ Teams forum for you to participate in, we would very much like for you to be involved and value your input.
Action: To be included in the Solutionpath User Forum conversation, please email hello@solutionpath.co.uk and we will add you to the conversation.
4. Into the future
There is the very real potential that this situation will not be “normal” by September 2020 and if that is the case, we need to start planning what that landscape looks like.
I’m sure you are all working hard on this and we would like to highlight how we can help and would like to understand how you are going to be bringing in different systems to support your students and how we might ingest that data.
If it is indeed possible that we can no longer have physical attendance which has long been held as a great indication of engagement, now more than ever we must ensure we have enough data in the system to accurately allow you to see the engagement levels of all students, support their wellbeing and ensure they continue as students at your University.
5. Online/Distance Learning Engagement Resources
We would like to call on our community to share with Solutionpath where you are seeing increased activity and what other online resources you may have that can be utilised within your engagement score. To facilitate conversation about potential online learning engagement resources for StREAM please log a ticket with the service desk.
Action: To discuss in further detail progression with this approach, please raise a ticket within your service desk and state the following:
“Please arrange a call to discuss our future options for online learning resources in StREAM”
We appreciate your continued support in these uncertain times,
Priorities, Customers Cov-19 and what part can StREAM play?
Wow, what a week. It was only this time last week that Matt Hancock MP announced that the vulnerable and 70+ should self-isolate (much to the disdain of my very fit 76-year-old mum). But these are extraordinary times, if not for the use of the word unprecedented, something that wasn’t part of the everyday lexicon and the nationalisation of the economy which is seeing industries completely closed, or fundamentally changed.
We are all worried as service providers and as service users, what does this mean? But of course, as something that is unprecedented then all we can do is ‘react’ to an emerging picture as you simply can’t plan for the unprecedented right? Well of course not, but you can plan for the things that you do know;
You have a period of 100% off-campus learning
Students will return to the learning at some point,
We may well continue to experience a similar event in the future
Our customers are telling us that our #LearningAnalytics student Engagement platform ‘StREAM’, is part of their contingency plans, using the platform as part of their home working/online learning strategy at a time in which sees attendance of itself now has no meaning in terms of participation, and of course, thinking about it as a support tool for students to help them self-calibrate under new and extraordinary circumstances.
Engagement as a measure of participation is offering school and course level understanding as well as individual student insights and because our system accommodates many predictive models, these can be toggled and switched to facilitate on and off-campus learning, meeting the needs of academic designers in reacting to the changing delivery. Allow you to be sensitive to your learner’s needs.
We will continue to learn from our community about how they are adapting (as much as they can) to ensure business continuity in the current climate, and of course get the most value out of StREAM, we will keep you updated from time to time, acknowledging the need to remain sensitive but equally to share anything that we think might be of note or interest in light of this remarkable period.
Of course, stay safe and get in touch if you need any help, in whatever context
Following the statement from the PM yesterday, the Senior Management Team took the decision to support the Governments request that for those companies that could employ a policy of ‘Work-from-home’ then they should. To that end, as from 09.00 hrs 17/03/2020, all SP staff will work from their home locations until we are advised otherwise.
Our plans are to meet virtually for all business meetings and are advising staff to distance themselves socially, irrespective of it being for business or personal reasons and keep up to date with the developing circumstances.
We will continually evaluate our plan and update staff and customers accordingly.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch should you have any further questions.
Thank you, SP SMT
16/03/20
Monday 16th March at 11:00 hrs
Further to the communication of last week and our plans and response to the ongoing Corona Virus (Covid-19).
As with most institutions, we are planning a period of working from home, something that we can achieve easily as our operations are all Cloud-based, although managing a remote workforce requires consideration to ensure we maintain good levels of service and this is something that we will continue to monitor.
It is with this lens that we have considered how we may be best placed to support YOU. We know that StREAM offers a means to support students on and off-campus and allows staff to continue to support their learning. It is that we are proposing to do the following;
Covid-19 Contingency planning review
We are asking YOU to advise us of how StREAM fits into the current plans so we can understand how we should balance our operational commitments better
Prioritise Covid-19 contingency related tickets
Acknowledging that this is a business-critical for maintaining operations we will aim to prioritise any tickets that form part of your contingency plans; this will, of course, be balanced against all operational needs
Service adoption support
Provide free of charge remote staff training to ensure service adoption is broad so the maximum numbers of staff can use StREAM; again group sessions and subject to operational demand
Should you wish to discuss any of these options please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Thank you, SP Team
12/03/20
Thursday 12th March 14.26hrs
Good afternoon,
**Apologies for the generic email, however, we were seeking a quick route to notifying all our customers. If you require a further conversation, then please respond via email and I will endeavor to call you as soon as possible**
Whilst we are maintaining a pragmatic response to the emerging advice and acknowledging regional response differences, we feel it appropriate that we now plan for a period of working as a remote workforce for a few reasons;
Safety of staff
First and foremost is the safety and well-being of all our employees. We have asked them to follow the advice from NHS England on personnel hygiene. We have handwash available in all hand washing areas, along with wipes and sprays to keep work areas clean.
We are aligned with the UK Government advice on self-isolation of returning travellers, this means that if a member of staff or any of their family members with whom they are in contact with have returned from high-risk areas, they alert their manager and self-isolate at home for a period of 14-days from the date of their return. If they have a job function that can be done from home the facilities are already set up and tested to do so.
Continuity of services and products
Our well-established Business Continuity Plans are in place.
We completed a remote workers audit w/c 17th February and completed our first Covid-19 risk assessment. Our assessment is available along with the relevant section of our BCP upon request.
Working from home is an established part of our business, our strategic approach to infrastructure ensures we have secure digital access to all critical systems for admin, data processing, finance, sales, marketing, customer service, and development teams.
Our normal BCP Reciprocal Agreements are in place with our supplier partners, these are tested annually.
Monitoring advice
Solutionpath continues to monitor the global coronavirus and COVID-19 situation and is aware of any changes to advise and projected threat level. Whilst being aware that the media may report speculation in the absence of fact in a fast-moving story. We are checking for updates at:
We have reviewed our critical suppliers to ask them about their preparedness for an outbreak of the virus and how they plan to protect their supply of products and services and our BCP updated.
Travel and communications
Solutionpath is now considering cancelling all non-essential business travel; any inter/national business travel requires executive-level approval and is promoting the use of video conferencing.
We have shared travel and returning traveller information with our staff, including information about what they should discuss with whom.
If or when the situation, advice or Solutionpath’s position change, we will re-issue our policies and guidance.
StREAM Learner Analytics in context of Covid-19
The value of StREAM to monitor ongoing student interactions with your University and its learning materials may offer you a means to continue to support the learning aims of your students. It is that we are treating our service as a critical service at this time, we will continue to review and monitor our capacity under any constraints. The senior management team and I (in the CC) will make ourselves available to discuss any specific requirements but we urge you at this stage to help us by advising your technical organisation to make the change requested*
*As part of the communication we asked that an IP address was whitelisted.
Wednesday 1st April 2020 The impact of COVID-19 on your StREAM Engagement Score Further to our recent communications, the onset of COVID-19 and the critical need to maintain social distancing significantly impact students’ abilities to perform the activities that were previously part of their day to day studies. This has the natural impact of […]
WANT TO CONTINUE READING?
Fill in your details in the form to the right to access the full article.