City University London is to use software to collect and
review student performance data to improve educational
standards.
The university is one of four institutions participating in the
Quality Assessment Innovation Project. The other participants, all
in the US, are the University of Georgia, Weber State University
and Santa Barbara City College.
The project's main goal is to foster innovation in education and to
make it easy for colleges and universities to measure their
results. This follows a recent warning from The Quality Assurance
Agency that universities in the UK must maintain teaching
standards.
Under the project, City University London will use WebCT Vista's
Powersight Kit to extract data on student activities, compare it
against student achievements, combine it with other campus data,
and use it for accreditation and programme improvement.
The university will also track students' online behaviour and
navigation pathways to help it improve the effectiveness of its
e-learning courses.
Data extracted from the WebCT Powersight Kit will enable
researchers in any institution to identify student patterns and
trends, isolate activities that lead to positive outcomes, target
areas that need improvement and evaluate the impact of changes.
Universities and colleges will be able to perform educational
analytics at the course, programme, curriculum, institutional and
system levels and use the findings for reporting, accreditation,
programme planning, learning effectiveness research and quality
reviews.
The Powersight Kit will soon be available as a module for the WebCT
Campus Edition course management system.
Susannah Quinsee, head of e-learning and associate director of
library services at City University, said, "Quantitative learning
data extracted from online learning programs provides a new
opportunity for improving the quality and effectiveness of the
education we deliver, as well as providing academic staff with a
greater understanding of online learning pedagogies.
"We are eager to develop a greater insight into online learner
behaviour and the WebCT Quality Assessment Innovation Project
provides a unique opportunity to do this while simultaneously
sharing our experiences with other institutions."