National Louis University Shared Data Model Used For Student Onboarding, Academics, and Support

IBL News | New York

Supporting online students through data-informed action has become the mainstay in higher education.

“It is important to understand the affordances of the data amassed during an online student’s journey to support their success from enrollment through graduation,” Dr. Bettyjo Bouchey, Associate Professor, and Vice Provost, Digital Strategy & Operations at National Louis University, said at the 2022 OLC Conference in Orlando, Florida, last week.

During a talk session and along with, Veronica Wilson Director of Service Excellence and Retention Strategies at National Louis University, Dr. Bouchey shared a series of student dashboards with scenarios of data-informed actions, as shown below.

Attendees learned how the National Louis University harnesses the many data points collected and maintained to personalize support, increase retention, sense of belonging, and satisfaction, and ultimately keep students engaged from matriculation through to their graduation.

Bettyjo Bouchey and Veronica Wilson [in the picture above] highlighted that too much data can also become a hindrance to effective action. They also stressed the technical obstacles of putting together data for the many platforms functioning at any school, such as LMS, SIS, CRM, and Portfolio.

The institution moved from using Tableau, due to the difficulty of maintaining it, to Power BI. The implementation of AI is pending. “We will get on AI and Machine Learning over time,” the two professors said.