Logicalis today announces the launch of Student Analytics, a predictive analytics package designed to bring significant social and financial benefits to UK universities as they seek to heighten student engagement, support retention strategies and enhance satisfaction.
Logicalis’ Student Analytics, powered by IBM technology, enables Universities to capture, predict and act on rich stores of information to develop more informed strategies and decisions for operational efficiency and student engagement.
Mark Starkey, Managing Director of Logicalis UK, comments, “Critical data is being captured every day by Universities that can inform better engagement and growth strategies – lecture attendance, use of library cards, student union and other facilities – they just don’t know it. Student Analytics gives them the ability to identify and analyse this information – mapping student insight across attendance, engagement with services and views on participation against key metrics and risk factors for real, actionable intelligence.”
One key area where institutions see a clear Return on Investment (RoI) from predictive analytics is in student retention rates; accurately predicting at-risk students and designing effective intervention and support strategies for students.
According to recent data by HEFCE upward of 8% of undergraduates drop-out in their first year of study[1]. This has a financial impact, of approximately £33k per student, as well as social implications for the individuals and the University at large. Using Student Analytics, institutions can harness everyday data to reduce these rates, by accurately identifying those students most at risk – and taking action.
Logicalis is currently working with a number of UK institutions to pilot Student Analytics and recently built a predictive model for retention, which has proved 90% accurate in identifying at-risk students. For a University with 3,000 first year undergraduates, that equates to hundreds of students proactively supported and potentially retained to continue to study and succeed.
Logicalis’ Student Analytics is built on IBM SPSS technology, and can be deployed on-site or hosted in Logicalis’ data centre with fully-managed and as a service consumption options available.
Starkey concludes, “Predictive analytics technology has already proved a success into student retention and engagement strategies in many American institutions and it presents a great opportunity for UK Universities on the global stage. By providing the all-important opportunity to engage and act upon the right information, at the right time, we look forward to working with many of our customers in the higher education space to make a real difference in meeting their long term objectives to maintain the highest quality experiences and a balanced budget.”
[1] HEFCE report April 2013/07: Non-continuation rates at English HEIs ‘Trends for entrants 2005-06 to 2010-11’. More information can be found here -http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/wp/currentworktowidenparticipation/studentretentionandsuccess/ncr/
