The Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Student Success Technologies Group is part of the Provost's Office and the Division of Information Technology. Our component parts include the Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse Team, the Analytics/Data Science Team, the PeopleSoft SA/Salesforce Team, and the myUMBC/Campus Information Portal Team.
We're very pleased to provide you with our "annual" report for 2021 through mid-year 2022, our goals, and our projects going forward. As the report is part of our assessment activities, we welcome your comments.
We continue to make progress on key themes:
We are grateful to our many collaborators and partners across the campus. Success is never final, but it is also surely a joint effort.
]]>The Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Student Success Technologies Group is part of the Provost;s Office and the Division of Information Technology. Our component parts include the Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse Team, the Analytics/Data Science Team, the PeopleSoft SA/Salesforce Team, and since late 2021, the myUMBC/Campus Information Portal Team.
We're very pleased to provide you with our "annual" report (delayed by the pandemic, like so many other things). The report details selected projects and initiatives from 2019 through mid-year 2021, our goals, and our projects going forward. As the report is part of our assessment activities, we welcome your comments.
We are grateful to our many collaborators and partners across the campus. Success is never final, but it is also surely a joint effort.
Mathematics is a powerful tool. We use applications from math all day, every day, like when we drive over a bridge or look at our email.
Math is very difficult for many people, and they struggle with it. Many students at our university (and almost all others) need to repeat a math class to progress in their program and complete their degrees.
Our research has uncovered some important facts:
Many students repeating math classes often must do so more than one time, which extends their time to degree and could prevent them from graduating.
Students who use the Math and Science Tutoring Center improve their chances of passing their math courses.
The positive effect from math tutoring is especially large for students who are repeating a course. “Repeaters” increase their chances of success by roughly 15 to 20 percentage points!
But, we found, only about 10 percent of students repeating math were going to tutoring
The Data Science Team, supported by DoIT and the Provost's Office, designed a pilot program in conjunction with the Math Department to “nudge” students repeating 100-level math courses to use tutoring.
A nudge is a message designed to provide information to many people at very low cost that changes behavior over time. An example of a nudge you see in everyday life is the roadside sign that says “Click it or ticket.” Our nudges let students know not just that tutoring is effective, but also how effective it is.
This semester (Spring 2021) we sent nudges to 114 students using a myUMBC personal post. About 70 percent of students receiving the nudge read them, and we have evidence that suggests that the nudge leads to an increased use of math tutoring by roughly 30 percent.
The pilot is now in its 8th semester. During that time we’ve nudged over 1800 students repeating their courses.
In addition to this program, we’re using what we’ve learned about nudges to help students in other ways that support their success, including combining them with predictive analytics for enhanced early alerts.
By Bob Carpenter
Almost everyone has found themselves in a position where they need to ask a question, but aren’t sure who they should ask or how to ask it. It can be frustrating (and inefficient) to ask several people for the same thing with the hope that one of them can help.
The Analytics and Data Science team, IRADS, and the REX team have made some simple changes to take the confusion out of asking for help with reports, analytics, or data requests. We’ve added links to the sites people generally go to find data. Look for a link that says “REQUEST HELP WITH DATA, REPORTS, OR ANALYTICS.” Clicking on that link takes you to a page which helps you to refine your request and to make sure the proper people see it. The requests become part of the familiar campus RT ticketing system.
Here’s what happens when you submit a ticket. Your request automatically becomes part of a queue reviewed by the Data Warehouse Group at its regular Friday meetings. At that meeting, your request is triaged, the appropriate member of the group is assigned to be responsible for it, and a due date is assigned. It will be tracked until it’s closed.
Not sure exactly what to ask? Look for my favorite link “None of the above fit or I don’t know how to ask for what I need” Our teams will work with you to help you define your question and help you get an answer.
The enhanced analytics, data, and report request system takes the worry about who to ask off your plate, and the RT ticket you generate takes away the worry about your request slipping through the cracks or being lost in an email inbox.
In this first of a series of updates, we’ll give a description of what HelioCampus (Helio, for short) is and why we’re investing in it, provide an overview of UMBC’s goals for the project, and summarize what we’re currently working on and what’s next.
HelioCampus was established as an independent company after being formed at UMGC. It provides a data analytics platform covering the student lifecycle, institutional finance, and advancement. Designed to run using Amazon Web Services, Helio provides UMBC with the next-generation decision support services we need to operate more strategically and sustainably (from a financial perspective).
Put simply, Helio integrates our enterprise data warehouse with advanced reporting and visualization tools. With it, we’ll be better able to share information from our systems and answer key questions through analytics, data storytelling, and data science and do it easier and faster. Helio’s a key component of an integrated infrastructure for academic planning, assessment, and analytics and it helps to support our strategic plan, strategic enrollment plan, and the recommendations of our Middle States accreditation Self-Study.
Our goals for Helio are to broaden and deepen our use of analytics to increase enrollment, improve student success, shorten time to degree, ensure financial sustainability, and accelerate gift giving...all key elements of UMBC’s plans to weather the current environment and position ourselves for growth and success going forward.
Helio uses Tableau visualization software. The first set of visualizations and tools, often called dashboards, has already been deployed to a small group of campus users to allow them to test the platform. These dashboards focus on metrics related to admissions, enrollment, retention, and graduation. People using Tableau have had very positive reactions to its ease of use and power.
We’re delighted to tell you that the implementation is on schedule. We will be holding regular meetings starting in the first quarter of 2021 that will showcase Helio’s and Tableau for people interested in learning more and we’ll provide training for people who would like it. Look for another installment in this series with the details.