Here are ten ways StREAM can enhance your academic practice:

1. Get to know your students and the factors that might influence their participation
Demographic information in StREAM can help you get to know your students more easily and to understand the factors that may influence their attendance or engagement. For example, knowing the percentage of students in your class who are commuting to university or understanding their prior educational experience can inform course design and delivery.

2. Create early-engagement notifications that support welcome and induction activity
Students who develop positive learning and engagement behaviours from the outset of their studies can significantly enhance their academic outcomes. Insights at student level provide evidence where new students may be taking longer to navigate university systems and procedures enabling targeted support designed to maximise success from the start of their studies.

3. Understand ‘what works’ for your student cohort
Knowing how your students are engaging with the different learning resources used in your course will reveal whether students are finding those activities and resources relevant and useful. Use cohort level insights to nudge student participation where individual engagement is low, particularly when triangulated against lower assessment outcomes.

4. Inform curriculum design, development and delivery
Good curriculum design can facilitate higher student engagement. Student evaluations that support ongoing quality enhancement can contribute to a reflective cycle of experiential learning. Insights on individual and cohort engagement with their learning resources can pinpoint where it would be useful to revisit curriculum design and provide multiple and varied opportunities for students to consolidate their learning, provide a scaffolded approach to assessment, support face-to-face interactions, boost students’ engagement scores and ultimately impact attainment.

5. Proactively intervene to help prevent module failure
Attendance and assessment insights at module level help to determine where a quick intervention early in the academic year (e.g. moving a student to a different seminar group to enable them to both attend and undertake paid work) can be the difference between passing or failing a module.

6. Hold data-informed conversations that align to individual student success measures
‘Success’ is an individual concept and that’s why no automated decisions on student engagement are made by StREAM. Rather, the data insights are the starting point for a conversation with students to understand what success means to them, enabling you to use your expertise to provide tailored information, advice and guidance to help them achieve their goals.

7. Share learning across the programme team to ensure a fully joined-up approach for each student
Academic life is busy and opportunities to discuss student progress may be limited. Understanding student engagement and attainment prior to formal team meetings saves time and makes it simpler for programme team members to work together to maximise opportunities for individual student success.

8. Review profile data to inform curriculum and assessment design and delivery
Review the demographic make-up of your cohort to understand their prior educational experiences and tailor the design of assessment support sessions accordingly. Early action to address differences in prior educational experience for example can also impact other widening participation gaps.

9. Support the achievement of good degrees
Triangulate assessment, module and engagement data in StREAM to glean insights as to which students could be supported to achieve good degrees, thus supporting the institutional achievement of key performance metrics.

10. Management-level insights that can help reduce attainment gaps
Review cohort or individual student engagement data via StREAM to provide real-time management insights that support planning activity, the delivery of any targeted outreach initiatives e.g. to address attainment gaps, and help close the loop when it comes to reporting against institutional KPIs.

Explore how StREAM can surface engagement insights at your institution and support your retention strategies by booking a call.