Student Achievement Dashboard: An enterprise solution for on-demand program evaluation Taylor Brodner, Information Systems Specialist Dan Carpenter, Executive Director of Student Success Purdue University

Data-driven Decision Making Is it ever good enough for a student affairs program to… feel like it does good work? have a long and respected tradition? do things the way we’ve always done it? Student affairs leaders and practitioners have to use quantitative evidence to… demonstrate the value of the effort (and seek resources) understand the correlation between effort and success indicators “see” change occur (or not) respond to questions of “return on investment” As a student affairs leader, I am limited by… my ability to analyze vast data sets the fact that there are vast data sets my need to turn data into a meaningful picture time

Purpose and Audience Over 100 sources of student data on campus Single source of official information Enables self-reliance Seamlessly combines data sets Used to answer questions and make data-driven decisions Intended for use by student affairs professionals and university decision makers

Student Achievement Dashboard Includes Custom cohorts Graduation and retention rates Average cumulative and semester GPA Average term credits Demographics Course performance data

Creation Process Business Intelligence + Institutional Research Requirements gathering Prepare initial data set Vet with focus groups or conduct individual interviews with intended users Finalize and validate data Implementation Governance / security

Scenario 1 An Associate Dean in the College of Science needs to know the performance of first generation, 21st Century Scholars who are women in the College of Science for a grant proposal Previous method: Get list of 21st Century Scholars from the State and/or Financial Aid Pull Registered Student Report (one semester at a time) Compare 21st Century Scholar list to registered student list to find currently enrolled students Filter by gender and college Pull list of first generation students from Student Attribute Report (one semester at a time) Compare previous list to first generation student list Calculate average term and cumulative GPA for students Repeat for as many semesters needed to determine performance Alter retention and graduation pivot tables to create retention / graduation chart for this specific subset of students Time spent: ~4 hours

Scenario 2 A donor requests the graduation and retention rates of Purdue Promise students vs 21st Century Scholar students vs Pell-eligible students vs all Purdue students Previous Method: Develop cohort lists of 21st Century Scholars by cohort by cross referencing State list and Financial Aid list, and running against frozen Census data Pull Purdue Promise students by cohort from Student Success database Partner with Financial Aid to obtain Pell-eligible students by cohort Pull University Retention Report (one for each cohort) Merge each University Retention Report to each 21st Century Scholar, Purdue Promise, and Pell-eligible cohort report Create pivot tables in Excel to calculate graduation and retention rates (one pivot table per group of students per cohort – 24 pivot tables for this example) Create step tables by typing numbers from pivot tables into a table Time spent: ~8 hours

Donor Step Table

Scenario 3 The Director of Supplemental Instruction wants to know which courses Purdue Promise students are struggling in so that she knows which courses to target Previous method: Combine Purdue Promise student cohort lists after downloading from Student Success database Run Registered Student list to determine which Purdue Promise students are currently enrolled and were enrolled for past few semester (have to run separately for each semester) Run Grade Reports of all courses offered over the past few semesters Merge Grade Report and Purdue Promise student list to find courses that Purdue Promise students are/were enrolled in Calculate DFW rates for courses for students enrolled in Purdue Promise and compare to DFW rates of students who are not in Purdue Promise Look at trends across time Time spent: 8+ hours depending on depth of analysis

Student Achievement Dashboard: An enterprise solution for on-demand program evaluation Taylor Brodner, Information Systems Specialist Dan Carpenter, Executive Director of Student Success Purdue University