The student experience: how data can transform wellbeing

Paying close attention to how wellbeing and pastoral care are managed and delivered is the key to creating world-class safe, secure, and caring environments where students can thrive.

For students and educational service providers, the goal is to ensure the successful completion of a course and that the student experience is positive and supportive.

With student wellbeing of paramount importance, insights can be gained by implementing a comprehensive student management system. This system can highlight potential problems or issues with individual students by using the power of AI to help educators identify potential risks, which can then be mitigated.

TechnologyOne’s enterprise educational solution can reveal patterns in student behaviour that may indicate a particular student is struggling. Often, these insights are not available to educational institutions. Today that is no longer the case.

Student information can be gathered and analysed via a dashboard, so anyone connected to student wellbeing or pastoral care can instantly access valuable information to identify issues before they become chronic problems. As a result, the system enables educational leaders to make the right, timely and cost-effective decisions that are best for their organisations and, critically, their students.

Integrated support

Educational institutions have been moving through a period of unprecedented change. Universities, for example, have had the pandemic, the shift to hybrid learning, and the increasing living costs for students to manage.

Educators have always placed the best interests of their students at the centre of their services. But what if those services could be transformed by using data to improve the support for enhanced wellbeing and pastoral care?

What is needed is integrated student support. A system that can use several data points to create a digital triage platform to alert staff to potential issues with an individual student. The key is to remove the siloes of data that educational institutions have used – often with several systems that can’t share the data they collect – to create a holistic approach to student care.

TechnologyOne’s Student Management System consolidates student data across student management touchpoints to give a much broader, data-driven, holistic view of the student. Which is where insight can be gained, flags can be raised, and action can be taken to intervene.

Proactive data

The recent TechnologyOne report ‘Creating a superior student experience in the new hybrid learning world’ highlighted the need for a more active approach to student support.

Students clearly indicated (33%) they would welcome more support for their wellbeing. In addition, a similar number also stated that using more technology that helped and supported them as they moved through their courses would be welcome.

Alison Whaley, director of student experience at Cornfield University, said: “Technology and the data it can show us can really inform our actions going forward to complement what we’re doing with our students in a classroom. Technology also helps us to understand student behaviour on a larger scale – and can be helpful in showing us what to do in managing and helping students.”

A complete overview of a student that supports them in the multiple facets of their time as they study is essential. TechnologyOne’s Student Management System can help improve staff communication and connectivity with their students. For example, simple automated email reminders that a student has not downloaded course documents, or a drop in attendance at lectures, can help alert staff about potential issues that may need their more detailed attention.

TechnologyOne’s Student Management System empowers educators with an early warning system to deliver the pastoral care students may need.

Student experience

The working environment all educational institutions find themselves operating in is challenging. Universities, for example, understand these pressures and have reacted with systems and services to support their students. However, the issue today is a lack of integration to create a complete view of each student.

Katie Bell, Chief Marketing Officer at UCAS, believes technology can improve student retention.

“The more that we can do to get those early warning systems. There may be some data that we can look into, like types of profiles of students who are more likely to drop out and I think technology can really up/help that because it’s a real value to universities, to retain the students.”

Taking an integrated and holistic approach to student support strategies can deliver the insights needed to identify potential issues that need prompt attention. Only a system that can draw together a range of data strands and then analyse that data can create new student welfare services to massively evolve how pastoral care is delivered.

Click here to read TechnologyOne’s report into the trends in student behaviour and how education institutions can improve the student experience.