A variety of student success systems promise to be the missing link in our classrooms both face to face and online. As the Chronicle article “Companies Promise ‘Personalized Education’” describes, many different software systems offer what they describe as the way to ensure student success – mostly through a combination of predictive analytics, somewhat intrusive communication methods (alerting students through Facebook?), and pseudo-gamified responses to students completing assignments which need to be completed in certain ways by faculty members.
Faculty are, of course, the ultimate arbiters of whether a software like this is useful on a campus – without faculty investment in using the system on a grand scale, there’s no point in spending the (often very large amounts of) money it requires to bring one (or many) of these systems to campus. In your courses, what do you see as the main driver of student success? Do you think software could assist you in helping students reach their goals, or do you think the “personalized education” gimmick is just that?
Recent Comments