As a leader in higher education focused on the unique needs of adult learners, University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has long been a pioneer in the area of learning analytics. Working from this foundation of continued innovation, leaders at UMUC became intrigued by the potential for advanced analytics to better understand student risk, the variables that contribute most to student success, and, most importantly, how to make such insights actionable to improve student outcomes.
During the Fall 2013 term, across an experimental pool of approximately 10,000 undergraduate enrollments randomly assigned to test and control, UMUC’s test group using the Inspire™ application outperformed the control group in successful course completion by nearly 3 percentage points (287 basis points), which translates to 150 students who passed courses they otherwise would have failed. These overall results, statistically significant at a 99.8% confidence level, were observed consistently for each session of the term.
