The power of data in achieving student success

Data sits at the heart of understanding South Africa’s diverse student mix and can provide the best chance for students to succeed at universities, according to professors Ahmed Bawa and Francois Strydom, authors of a presentation at the Siyaphumelela 2019 Conference held in Johannesburg last month.

Universities South Africa (USAf) Chief Executive Bawa said the presentation “Student and Lecturer Engagement Data for Institutional and Sectoral Transformation” aimed to encourage university leaders and managers to deliberately use existing and new data about student experiences, expectations, and perceived strengths and weaknesses in the design of universities and what goes on in them.

“It would be a risk to make assumptions about who our students are and what they bring with them to university and what their needs are,” said Bawa.

Strydom, director of the University of the Free State’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, said the South African Survey of Student Engagement (SASSE), which has been run by the centre for 12 years, provides institutions with an evidence-based or data-driven understanding of the students in their institution.

“The surveys provide actionable data which can be used to develop environments that optimise students’ chances of success,” he said.

SASSE gathers comprehensive information from universities relating to high-impact practices and behaviours identified as having an influence on student success and the quality of the undergraduate teaching and learning experience.

The questionnaires collect information about:

• • Students’ participation in dozens of educationally purposeful activities;
  
  
• • Students’ interaction with lecturers and their peers, and the degree to which they engage with diversity;
  
  
• • The way students experience the support provided by institutions;
  
  
• • Estimates of educational and personal growth since starting higher education; as well as background and demographic information.

“SASSE data helps us better understand what the experiences of different groups (split by age, generation status, race and gender, etc) in our universities are. By using data, we can develop more nuanced, even individualised, approaches to helping different students have the best chance to succeed in their studies,” said Strydom.

The concept of “student engagement” is essentially defined as what students do (the time and energy they devote to educationally purposeful activities) and what institutions do (the extent to which they employ effective educational practices to induce students to do the right things).

One of the primary applications of student engagement data is improving the quality of teaching and learning in higher-education institutions. It was this goal that led to USAf adopting the project to contribute to the overarching challenge of producing new generations of engaged intellectuals.

“By addressing questions such as “Who are our students?”, “What do they bring with them to university?”, “What are their expectations?”, etc, the sector and the institutions within it will be better placed to engage in designing exercises to allow them to deliberately and efficiently address the intellectual, social and emotional development of our students,” said Bawa.

“For example, we were somewhat surprised that most students entering universities are in the 19-20 age group rather than the 17-18 age group, which would have been the case 20 years ago. The question that is posed is what the implications of this are. The survey does not include postgraduate students, nor does it include UNISA. These may have resulted in a different 'mature mix', he said.

SASSE measures student engagement on the basis of five themes:

• • The academic challenge includes questions on how often students analyse, evaluate, and apply numerical information; how often they engage in learning strategies that have been proven to be effective; and whether students engage in deep approaches to learning, namely, whether they apply reflective and integrative strategies and higher-order learning approaches.
  
  
• • Learning with peers, based on the premise that students learn when they are working with other students, in and out of class. Other questions relate to the frequency of discussions with diverse others – people of different races, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, religious beliefs or political views.
  
  
• • Experiences with staff, which relates to the assertion that by interacting with staff members inside and outside the classroom, students learn first-hand how experts think, learn how to solve practical problems and are exposed to various teaching practices.
  
  
• • Campus environment. This explores students’ experience of the campus environment and the quality of their relationships with other students and academic and administrative staff.
  
  
• • High impact practices. These are intentional institutional strategies and practices that have a demonstrable positive impact on students' learning and development, and include first-year experience programmes, academic advising, peer learning support, academic and quantitative literacy courses, participation in student societies, undergraduate research projects and service learning.

Bawa concedes that the data presented at the conference is only a fraction of the total amount of data available and which has been published. “We will be having engagements with university leaders on the data so that they can build the information available into their planning and design of the institutions,” he said.

There is no doubt that universities throughout the country are cottoning onto the use of data to measure performance in respect of student engagement, according to Strydom.

“Initially, we had nine or 10 institutions involved, but this changed with the support of the Kresge Foundation. Between 2014-19 we were joined by 17 public higher education institutions, three private higher education institutions and one Southern African higher education institution which are making use of the surveys,” he said.