Student privacy is a critical area of higher education that deserves greater focus, particularly as student data digitalization increases. Many colleges and universities use data literacy as a way to prepare students, sometimes from different disciplines, to work with others' data postgraduation. Data literacy can be an avenue for helping all…

Traditional student information systems were designed primarily to collect and manage records of course enrollment and credit hours earned, as well as other data elements needed to monitor each student's progress to graduation. Now, institutions want to monitor and improve the quality and equity of students' learning experiences in courses and the…

Digital transformation (Dx) refers to a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution's business model, strategic directions, and value proposition. Dx initiatives on many campuses are anchored in student success goals. As a result of this…

Curriculum maps have long served as useful guides in the careful design of a curriculum's pedagogical aims and where they are to be achieved, however such a map cannot indicate how students are actually moving through the curriculum. This article discusses traffic models. When employed in the study of courses drawn from multiple departments,…

In 2017 the National Association of System Heads launched its Taking Student Success to Scale: High Impact Practices Network. The goals of this initiative were to identify and scale promising High Impact Practices (HIPs) at both the campus and system level to prioritize equitable participation for low-income and first-generation students and…

Equity is emerging as a new frontier in the student success movement. But it's not enough to tackle higher education's deep equity divides by looking only at markers such as persistence, transfer, course credits, and DWF grades. True equity accountability depends on clarity about the key components of a quality education, especially the kinds of…

Learning Analytics (LA) has been identified as one of the top technology trends in higher education today (Johnson et al., 2013). LA is based on the idea that datasets generated through normal administrative, teaching, or learning activities--such as registrar data or interactions with learning management systems--can be analyzed to enhance…

The newest student activist movement appears to be amplifying what some higher education practitioners have talked about for a long time: students of color have been granted access to an educational opportunity that was not as advertised, and the result is not good enough. Others are shining the spotlight on race, class, identity, and equity as…

Many institutions are trying to better understand the factors that drive student success and failure in order to improve the efficiency of degree production. Traditional academic reporting systems are not adequate for this purpose, since they are designed to measure outcomes, not to uncover the factors that influence them. To address this problem,…

Traditionally, the collegiate advising system provides each student with a personal academic advisor who designs a pathway to the degree for that student in face-to-face meetings. Ideally, this is a supportive mentoring relationship. In truth, however, this system is highly inefficient, error prone, expensive, and a source of ubiquitous student…

Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count is a national initiative dedicated to the premise that community colleges should be as successful at student retention and graduation, particularly for students of color and low-income, as they are at enrollment. On campus, the initiative is focused on creating a culture of evidence, one in which data…