Back to basics: Combining analytics and early assessment with personalised contact to improve student progress

Student progression, attrition and completion are key metrics for all Universities. Subject levelprogress rates can be a useful lead indicator of these metrics; thus allowing qualityimprovement activities to be piloted and evaluated in shorter timeframes. The aim of this pilotstudy was to examine the effect of a series of pre-census interventions on subject progressrates. In 2018, twenty five subjects from the Faculty of Science at Charles Sturt Universitywere selected to participate in the pilot based on a history of poor subject progress rates.Approximately 700 disengaged students were identified via learning analytics and emailed inweek 2. In weeks 3 and 4 a range of “triggers” were used to identify 425 students whoremained disengaged and contact was made via phone and/or email. Overall average subjectprogress rates increased from 66% in 2017 to 80% in 2018 (p<0.05) with a significant reductionin the average number of fail and fail withdrawn grades (from 42 to 26 per subject, p<0.05).Overall, we demonstrated that significant improvements in subject progress rates can beachieved when academics and Divisional support staff work collaboratively to identify, contactand support disengaged students prior to the HECS census date.