Student Success Management System - An ultimate guide

Student success management system is the hot and brewing topic in higher education at present. If you are part of the higher education community, you must be knowing this. This resource page highlights the A to Z about student success management, its definition, Covid’s impact, and challenges institutions face when it comes to implementing student success management on their campus.

As higher ed decision-makers, we know how important this area is to you; we know you have been trying to focus on broader aspirations such as embedding employability into curricula, nurturing student engagement & attainment, optimizing student transition, and increasing student retention.

What is Student Success in Higher Education?

Student success in higher education is often measured by student engagement and successful outcomes, and it is crucial to pay special attention to the needs of first-generation and historically marginalized students. These student groups may be more likely to experience obstacles to success or to drop out because they frequently face particular difficulties. In order to address these inequalities and promote equitable outcomes, it is essential to offer targeted institutional support.

Student Success has become a campus-wide challenge, mainly because it is a major criterion for assessing institutional quality by most accreditation bodies. Areas like student retention, attainment of learning outcomes, acquisition of skills & competencies, academic achievement, and career success have become the major areas of concern. The end-to-end administration of these operations comes under “student success management”.
With the recent hype happening around higher education, student success is no more a common term.

It refers to a concrete set of plans that will help institutions achieve graduation rates, streamline internal operations, and assure a successful career path for students even after graduation.

Definition of Student Success in Higher Education

The definition of student success in higher education refers to the accomplishment and positive outcomes achieved by students during their college or university experience. It encompasses various dimensions of achievement, including academic performance, personal growth, career development, and overall well-being.

Student success is not limited to grades or academic performance alone but extends to the holistic development of students. It takes into account their intellectual, emotional, social, and professional growth. It recognizes that education is a transformative process that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Importance of Student Success Management in Higher Education Institutions

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that student success is an area of critical importance:

• The goal to achieve “student success” was in the top spot in the Educause Top 10 IT issues list for several years.
• Nearly 8% of undergraduates drop out in their first year of study—costing around £33,000 per student for universities and loss of time, money, and confidence knocked from failing for the students confirms the  Guardian Higher Education Network (30 June 2015).
• Most recently when the pandemic hit, 38 percent of drop-outs cite financial pressure as the main reason for quitting, considering the shut-down of restaurants and businesses, which left a lot of working students without jobs.
• (Education India Initiative September 14, 2021)
• In another survey by UK Engagement (2015) about skill development, students displayed lower response rates in acquiring employability skills and being informed and active citizens. 

How is Student Success generally measured?

There are several key metrics that determine student success but retention and graduation are majorly seen as the threshold of student success.

Student Success Management Metrics checklist

Some of the other key leading indicators that contribute to student success are;

The impact of COVID-19 and the evolution of Student Success Management

Student success management is a comprehensive terminology that was mainly born as a retention approach. A majority of colleges that focused on first-year retention and on-time graduation had this executed in their institution.

It bridges faculty, staff, advisors, and administrators under a systematized care network to assist students from the start till the finish.

Though this concept existed earlier, it gained more importance during the pandemic. With the COVID-19 pandemic’s shift to online learning, there were an array of challenges for faculty and students alike. While the students struggled taking classes virtually without the campus infrastructure, the educators juggled adapting their pedagogies to the technologies at hand. They consistently faced the challenge of keeping students engaged; this gave the stakeholders a grip over things that getting back to "normal" would take time and the technology used for short-term remote learning has to be replaced with purpose-built online learning for the long haul.

These challenges further prompted higher ed institutions to reexamine "student success" and what it was expected to deliver from a student perspective. Higher education is still unsure of the shift to normalcy and has its fingers crossed in the foreseeable future.
In an effort to address these high stakes in higher education, Instructure conducted a global benchmark study, which identified what defines student success and its driving factors of engagement. Here are a few statistics from the survey which stress the fact that COVID-19 has been an enzyme for change.

• 85% of students agreed that the COVID-19 impacted their ability to succeed.
• 71% of them stated that it influenced their academic progress.
• 70% of faculty felt that COVID-19 has made students fall behind on their studies than ever before.

Student success framework and multiple stakeholders in higher education

For Institutions and related Higher Education bodies, the student success framework;

• Benchmarks and collates evidence on performance, progress, and impact
• Facilitates engagement
• Identify and focus at-risk students at the initial stages and improve
• Outlines and fosters continuous development
• Brings together stakeholder groups to initiate student success strategies
• Informs planning, review, validation, accreditation, and programme approval processes

For STUDENTS’, unions, guilds, and associations the student success framework;

• indicates the areas of learning to constantly engage towards student success
• Lays out strategies to boost and improve students interpersonal skills, knowledge, experience, new ways of working, learning, and thinking in HE

For STAFF, the student success management system,

• develops a framework to enhance the quality of students’ learning experience throughout their lifecycle with effective curriculum and assessment design
• encourages collaborative ways of working towards the delivery and execution of curriculum, learning, and professional development
• offers processes to learn from, contribute to, and influence learning, teaching, and research activities for advancement and sustainability

Each student is different; they call for different levels of motivation, attention, and experiences. Hence, higher education institutions should offer them a differentiated and focused approach when it comes to teaching and learning.

What is the Student Success Team in Higher Education Institutions?

The student success team has evolved over the years. Maybe a decade ago, the student success cabinet meeting had only the CIO, admin, enrollment manager, financial aid director, and probably the head of the career center as its participants. But today there are newer roles like student advisor, counselors, tutors, mentor, success coaches, student success manager. The change is not just about the attendees of the meeting but with the challenges too.

Key responsibilities of the student success team

The student success mentors support students in areas like;

• Creates and maintains an ecosystem of support by collaborating with faculty, advisors, and specialized support staff to address student needs as and when they arise
• Provides ongoing support, training, and communication with departments regarding system changes and features
• Use predictive analysis tools to assess, identify and prioritize students who need the help of student support services
• Provide constant information to the student support services to collaboratively and proactively track and monitor student outcomes, ensuring the ongoing success
• Conduct quantitative and qualitative research to collect data basically on drop-outs, non-returners, and low-performers and to point out the areas of trouble
• Connect directly with departments to provide student services, student support, and comprehensive advising
• Coordinate all services provided to current students admitted and enrolled in online programs

Student Success and its area of focus

On the whole, student success addresses six strategic areas, as described in the diagram below. 

All the six frameworks intend to achieve the following outcomes:

1. Internationalization: Prepares students to contribute responsibly to be a part of the globally interconnected society
2. Employability: Successfully transitions students to become career-ready and to face the greater economic challenges
3. Greater student access, retention, and attainment: Fosters full and equal participation of all students throughout their lifecycle
4. Flexible learning: Allows students to learn flexibly at their own pace, place, and mode of delivery
5. Transformed assessments: Maximizes student learning with the academic, discipline, and professional communities
6. Boost in engagement: Develops a commitment to developing an open, constructive, and ongoing discourse between student groups, faculty, parents, and staff

Top 6 Student Success challenges faced by Higher Education institutes

Early alerts and interventions

Also referred to as an early alert or early warning program, the early intervention program is most commonly used at two- and four-year campuses as means of improving retention and institutional persistence rates.

This helps intercept students’ behavior early and is by far one of the most effective ways to keep them in the system and help them graduate with their degree of choice. The techniques work best when it comes to dealing with students with low CGPA, those who are emotionally down, and with health problems.

Recommendations:

Making use of technology to automate early alert systems can assist increase retention and completion rates. Tailoring details like messaging, delivery, and timing of interactions can enable support teams to provide personalized support at scale. This again ensures the staff time doesn't go to waste and that the institutional resources are put to good use.

Inconsistent approach to student support and advising

A major factor of student success lies in getting students to believe ahead of where they are now and set realistic career goals to move forward. A student advising initiative with a dedicated support team can sound like a win-win approach.
However, when staff is left to go their own way without proper training, a variety of approaches and methodologies can create inconsistent experiences for students.

The commotion gets amplified when multiple faculty and students outside student services get involved in the student support.

Recommendations:

It is wise that everyone takes responsibility for students' success. But for a measurable impact on student outcomes, all support functions should be aligned to a centralized process that promotes a shared language of student success across departments.

Career readiness
This is the number one priority of today’s modern students. They expect their institutions to prepare them for the workforce with work readiness. On the contrary, what most institutions lack is matching programs according to the job on demand and ways to connect, build relationships, and create meaningful peer networks that go beyond graduation.

Recommendations:
Educational institutions should figure out a solution that not only connects students with opportunities when they graduate but work with companies to bridge skills gaps. Project-based learning may well use creativity, critical thinking, and equip students to answer real-life challenges and needs. Collaborating with community partners may help students develop skills needed for the workplace. Faculty can use portfolios, online badges, and certificates to assess student learning.

 Keeping students engaged from a distance

Another biggest area of concern, when it comes to engagement, are students expect hands-on instruction and experiential learning opportunities to be the most impactful engagement strategies. They also prefer different methodologies like group discussions, academic credits, activity walls, online quizzes, problem-solving techniques as effective student engagement strategies at their institutions.

Recommendations:
While most institutions have started to leverage technology to demonstrate skills, there are still some who are in the decision stages. The truth however is they are eager to use virtual learning to deliver an immersive learning experience, with a combination of collaboration tools for instant feedback, feedback loops, and peer comments for increased student engagement.

• Move beyond the one-way video lecture to a more immersive experience
• Focus on communication and feedback loops with students
• Leverage technology that supports peer-review and peer-to-peer communication and collaboration

Difficulty connecting with students

Digital transformation has benefited higher education society in many ways; the method of instruction has shifted to a digital classroom, student registration happens in just a few clicks, and e-resources have been replaced with twenty-pound texts of yore.
So why are they still institutions that rely on face-to-face interactions as a gold standard of student support? It could be because some may feel that in-person interactions are the best for relationship building and that technology-enabled communication is too complicated and expensive.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. Institutions that rely on face-to-face student support can strain their staff and faculty's time and may hinder the most.

Recommendations:
Pick up a multichannel student support approach. Offering students multichannel options for communication and for tracking preferences increases engagement between the students and staff. Rather than the older one-on-one appointment, it creates more opportunities for students to connect via text, mobile, and other modes.

Staff not fully utilized for better technology capabilities

When an institution has invested in a particular student support platform, it's crucial that the whole faculty, staff, and department use it consistently. There has to be proper orientation and training to the new tech adoption to use it optimally, for increased ROI.

Recommendations:
What often happens in higher ed campuses is, often staff use the platform's surface functionalities. Seeing its many ways will enhance their own roles, maximizing their value.
Integrating with technology not only maximizes staff's time and talent but empowers them to meaningfully engage with students towards success.

Absence of crucial students performance data

This is one of the main reasons for the need for student success management. Higher ed institutions need data to,

• Proactively identify students who need additional support
• Derive an effective plan to connect, collaborate, research, and gain insight from others

The need for Higher Education Student Success Management Software

With an overarching framework, the Student Success management system has been designed to integrate and combat the above challenges into one holistic and comprehensive approach.
The platform helps institutions to focus on strategic priority or priorities. What’s best about the system is its way of evidencing and benchmarking student performance, their progress, impact over time, and offers notification prompts with an aim to bring stakeholder groups in strategic priorities like retention rates, career readiness that impacts student success within and beyond HE.
Broadly, student success management maximizes

• Overall program persistence
• Degree attainment, student retention, & progression
• Post-graduate outcomes
• Credit completion and credit attempts
• Prevents student drop out by 61%

Creatrix Student Success Management Software System

The Creatrix Student Success Platform creates a centralized place to manage student data from existing campus systems, giving administrators, student advisors, instructors a 360-degree view and access to students’ data to make informed decisions.
The platform allows counselors and advisors to manage even huge caseloads that arise from different departments including the registrar, student affairs, faculty, finance about students’ performance, low CGPA score, fee default, classroom behavior, etc.
The flags raised are instantly assigned to a set of advisors (academic supports, financial support, counseling & mentoring, etc) and then to intervention providers for early mediation and remediation. The system triggers auto-notification and reminders and lets advisors create slots, plan, tasks, make notes, etc.
There is the main dashboard, degree plan, self-registration, guided pathway, user management, reports & analytics.

Highlighting features of Creatrix's Student Success management System

• Flags at-risk students, followed by early intervention
• Promotes students’ positive behavior
• Adjustable configurable workflows for faculty, advisors, and staff to deliver proactive student support
• Builds institution-specific, term-over-term, or year-over-year persistence models
• Generation of CGPA score to assess progress rate of students
• Business intelligence capabilities
• Flat file integrations
• Slot booking with complete availability management
• Multimodal student communications including email, text, or notes, etc
• Promotes campus-wide student support through observational early alerts, case referrals, closed-loop reporting, etc
• Customizable workflow configurations by roles and service
• Workflow analytics that tracks trends on cases, assignments, alerts, risk,  attendance
• Analytics that compares and measures that tracks student risk, academic performance, and their progress

Conclusion

44% of student advising offices have picked up student success technology, states Tyton Partners in the last three years. There’s definitely going to be a rise in student success solution adoption in the coming years, considering the demand we see in the present higher education market.

Research reveals the want for early visibility options into students’ success and failure. Creatrix Student Success software was born as an answer with predictive tools and analytics; in order to let institutions take action on these insights, we have embedded a configurable workflow with case management capabilities so the institutions help more students thrive, persist, and graduate.

Contact our team to take the next step in enhancing student success at your institution.