Debates in Parliament on the Duty of Care and Mental Health Support in Higher Education have highlighted that universities need more support when it comes to support and intervention in relation to student wellbeing.
In June this year, Robert Halfron MP, Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships & Higher Education, published a letter highlighting several ways universities can improve their support to students, including creation of a new Student Mental Health task force. Chair of this task force, Professor Edward Peck, Student Support Champion for Higher Education and Nottingham Trent University Vice-Chancellor, has identified a plan for better identification of students who need support, including with the use of student engagement data analytics as one of three areas for improvement.
Most recently, (11th September), the Government released their Suicide Prevention in England: 5-year cross-sector strategy aimed at doing more to prevent suicides, which speaks to the role of universities in supporting mental health and wellbeing, regarded critical in suicide prevention. Improving data and evidence to help provide more timely support interventions tailored to priority groups are defined as priority areas of action, a narrative strongly advocated for here at StREAM by Kortext.
Data is a critical tool for getting upstream of a crisis
StREAM has been at the forefront of student engagement analytics for over a decade.
Supporting students’ successful outcomes, by identifying those students who may be struggling and showing signs of risk to enable early intervention initiatives, is at the heart of the strategic objectives for the use of student engagement analytics across our client community. Over this time, data has proven not only to be a powerful proxy for progression but in the context of wellbeing, a critical tool for getting upstream of potential crises.
Nottingham Trent University highlighted in a case study (2019) revealing their successful use of learning analytics that no-engagement alerts are a good early warning sign for students who may be struggling with mental health conditions. They found that ‘final year students with mental health conditions are three times more likely to generate a no-engagement alert than their peers’.
Findings like these provide predictive capability and could prove valuable in improving cross-sector understanding in the links between student academic engagement, students backgrounds, mental health and risk of suicide to inform practice in the future.
Starting a conversation is key
Our Student Engagement Analytics Platform StREAM looks at how students are engaging in their daily educationally purposeful activity by visualising students’ engagement from none to very high categories. Changes in engagement trends and in particular ‘no engagement’ can trigger alerts to students and/or pastoral staff to action outreach. That outreach could be as simple as acknowledging that a change in their engagement has been noticed with an offer of support or providing signposting to useful information.
That kind of personalised and timely outreach can show a student that they are valued and cared for. For those that need support, early intervention can be put in place, whether that be to initiate a conversation, refer to specialist services or support in their academic studies; that kind of proactive intervention could be critical to preventing a point of crisis, reducing the possibility of students ‘falling through the net’, whilst also helping to foster a whole university approach to mental health support.
A foundation to build on for wellbeing and mental health support
In relation to the current debate, we believe we have a great foundation to build on the use case for engagement analytics for student wellbeing and mental health support.
We recognise that technology is only part of the complex and sensitive strategy needed when it comes to providing a duty of care to students however, it is without doubt that engagement analytics provide universities with some powerful insights into student behaviours that can inform supportive action long before a problem escalates into a crisis. At a time when resources are stretched, it’s harder to form personal relationships, and many mental health conditions are undisclosed, this use case demonstrates a real example of where technology can enhance the human touch and something that every university could start using today.
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