Dr. Chad Brassil will discuss how The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) has created a set of dashboards, called the UNL Course Demographic Suite, which facilitate reflection and analysis on demographic differences in student success at the level of courses. These are an integrated set of dashboards that allows both broad viewing of patterns across campus as well as personalized dashboards for instructors to explore demographic differences in individual assignments and click rates on classroom resources.
With a common design across dashboards derived from different sources, the suite of dashboards creates a common language for conversations that can be passed between deans, faculty committees, and individual instructors. In addition to UNL's institutional data archive, the dashboards utilize the Unizin Data Platform and are implemented for viewing in Tableau. So as to reduce barriers to use, all instructors have access to their personalized dashboards, which are embedded directly into Canvas, UNL's learning management system.
Demographic metrics are viewed expansively, including common metrics such as race/ethnicity and first-generation, as well as rural/urban and neighborhood index. By utilizing a wide number of metrics, UNL aims to engage a wide base of support and interest among faculty. UNL aims to support the use of these dashboards by instructors with a culture of mutual respect and support for self-reflection and continuous improvement.
A culture of support and data is fostered by instructor learning communities, campus-wide workshops, incorporation of these dashboards into Academic Program Reviews, and college-driven departmental reflections. The demographic suite is supported by additional analytic dashboards: a survey that connects students to campus resources matching their needs and data highlighting outlier students in terms of course performance and clicks that would benefit from outreach by an Academic Navigator.
An open-source report will be shared to support institutions interested in undertaking some of this work.
Learn more about Chad Brassil here.