Category: Blog

DFW Rates and You: Rethinking Support for At-Risk Students

In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Bernadette Jungblut, West Virginia University’s director of assessment and retention, noted with some dismay that too frequently institutions have used data on individual courses’ D/fail/withdraw rates primarily as a means of performance evaluation for faculty, rather than partnering with faculty in taking a closer look at the DFW rates for clues to identify specific challenges students are having. Jungblut suggests that historical and current DFW is a particularly effective indicator that can be used to inform proactive rather than punitive action. Indeed, many institutions have begun identifying students taking courses with high DFW rates as “at risk.” On one level, this is a useful move — if it prompts both faculty and those charged with student retention to monitor real-time, operational data on students in those courses closely. But this is only a preliminary move, taking a “broad brush stroke” approach to tracking the students taking these courses. With a limited amount of digging into student data, it’s possible to take a much more sophisticated and effective approach to identifying and supporting at-risk students in high-DFW courses. Jungblut offers these ideas. Taking a Closer Look at Your Data Have you looked at your […]

Prospecting Using Social Media: Getting Started

Marianne Pelletier, CFRE, the director of research and data support for Cornell University and author of the recent Academic Impressions monograph Prospecting Using Social Media, has embarked on some extensive experimentation with integrating social media into prospecting and prospect research. We interviewed her this week to ask why prospect researchers need to be moving on this quickly, and to ask what myths about social media and prospecting might stand in need of debunking. There are advancement shops that have made some early strides in this, and a few that have been using social media in prospecting for a while. This article is for those shops that are at the earliest stage or are considering it. GET A THOROUGH PRIMER ON USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PROSPECT RESEARCH This Academic Impressions monograph by Marianne Pelletier, CFRE, will walk you through more than 30 separate exercises in using social media for prospecting and for prospect research, and will provide you with introductory information on the following: The possibilities and limits of using social media in prospecting Tactics for mining social media to locate wealthy prospects, with walkthroughs of specific steps and examples How social media activity can reveal assets among your prospect pool […]

Targeting Your Social Media Content

In a 2011 interview with Academic Impressions, Brad Ward, CEO of BlueFuego Inc., cited his organization’s research into the impact of university Facebook pages. After a 25-month study of nearly 400,000 Facebook updates across more than 1,200 university Facebook pages, Ward concluded that most institutions offer too much content via social media channels, leading to declines in engagement as their audiences begin to “tune them out.” Ward warns that quality is far more important than quantity, because institutions compete with family and friends for time and social media “space” — in short, for the attention of students and alumni on channels that are already overcrowded with content. It’s critical that marketing and communications and alumni relations offices invest more in listening to their audience’s social media preferences and preferred content. Effective listening can empower your office to offer highly targeted content — whether on your website, on your Facebook page, or via a mobile app. In a follow-up article in June 2011, we turned to Linda Thomas Brooks, president of Ingenuity Media, The Martin Group and past member of the board of directors for the Ohio State University Alumni Association. With considerable expertise in setting up effective social media listening posts, Brooks […]

Showcase: Examples of Mobile Technology Used for Teaching and Learning

With students bringing smartphones and tablets to campus — and expecting to access information and course content via mobile devices — it continues to be urgent for faculty developers and instructional technologists to explore the affordances of these devices and the opportunities for using them to enhance teaching and learning. In our past article, “Piloting Mobile Learning,” we offered a review of how to pursue a pilot project effectively. Today’s article offers a brief summary of the most critical affordances of mobile devices and a showcase of examples from Boise State University’s mLearning Scholars program. The program is part of the university’s Mobile Learning Initiative, “a multi-year project to identify and support key uses of mobile technology that will impact the ways we teach and learn,” and mLearning Scholars supports two cohorts of faculty in exploring these questions. One cohort consists of faculty making their first forays into mobile learning; the second cohort consists of faculty with some degree of fluency in mobile technologies, who are now addressing very targeted research questions. We turned to Dale Pike, director of academic technologies at Boise State University and a lead thinker on the adoption of mobile technologies in the classroom. We asked […]

Seeing Success in Space Optimization

In a July 2012 survey of facilities managers in higher education, Academic Impressions found that 73% of facilities managers cite optimizing space utilization as either “high priority” or “highest priority” among initiatives for the next year. When asked about challenges faced in achieving this, facilities managers expressed concern over buy-in, both from senior leadership (for prioritizing space needs) and from the rest of the campus (in implementing a space utilization initiative). It is no surprise that space use is often a political issue on college campuses, with many departments, both academic and administrative, vying for protection of “their” space. If a space optimization effort is to be successful, it will need both senior leadership and a commitment across the campus to shift the conversation from departmental ownership of space to institutional ownership of space. Leadership Buy-in For advice, we turned to a panel of experts that included Kambiz Khalili, the assistant vice chancellor for student affairs and the executive director of housing and dining services at the University of Colorado Boulder; Dan King, the assistant vice president for facilities at Auburn University; and Kathie Shafer, vice president for operations at Messiah College. This panel stressed that the two officials that […]

Why It’s More Critical than Ever to Cultivate the Middle of Your Giving Pyramid

In Academic Impressions’ recent free webcast Rethinking Campaign and Major Gift Strategies, we put together a snapshot of data culled from a series of recent surveys and reports. While many institutions responded a fear years ago to the recession by focusing increasingly on cultivating top donors, the snapshot we presented documents the extent to which this strategy may be unsustainable for your shop. Here are the highlights: More Focus on Top Donors, but Fewer Donors According to the CASE Campaign Report 2011, over the past five years (2006-2011): The percentage of campaign dollars provided by the top 1% of donors has increased from 64% to 77% The percentage of campaign dollars provided by the top 10% of donors has increased from 87% to 95% So only 5% of campaign dollars are being provided by the middle of the donor pyramid. Here are a few reasons why this should be concerning: According to Target Analytics’ Q4 2011 donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance, the number of donors for all nonprofits has declined over the last six years by 5.3%, and the overall number of new donors acquired per year has declined 14.6% over those same past six years. In tightening their […]

Enrolling and Retaining First-Generation Students: 3 Things You Need to Know

As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We’ve addressed the issue before in Higher Ed Impact, offering tips from various experts in enrollment management. This week, we wanted to pull together several disparate research findings over the past several years that, when taken together, tell a story of where some institutions may be missing opportunities to enroll, prepare, and support first-generation students more effectively. Here are three findings to consider when developing a holistic strategy for enrolling and serving lower-income, first-generation students: Let’s take a closer look. 1. Many First-Gen Admits Don’t Enroll Because They Don’t Believe They’ll Qualify for Financial Aid When asked why first-generation admits opt not to enroll, Thom Golden, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University, cites several barriers: The American Council of Education has released several studies indicating that over 1.8 million low-income and middle-income families who would have qualified for college aid failed to apply. Golden notes that the issue is particularly pronounced in first-generation college families. “We often assume that if a student needs […]

Copyright, Fair Use, and Electronic Materials: Three Tips

Recent intellectual property rights lawsuits against institutions of higher education — such as the lawsuit over video streaming at UCLA or the lawsuit against Georgia State University over e-reserves — make two things clear: how little is understood on campus about what “fair use” entails, and how critical it is to plan for risk mitigation as your campus community increasingly makes use of digital content. To help unpack the complications involved, we turned to experts Steven McDonald, general counsel for the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and Kevin Smith, director of scholarly communications for Duke University’s Perkins Library. Smith and McDonald offer their reflections on the Georgia State case and provide three tips for addressing fair use at your institution proactively rather than reactively. COPYRIGHT AND FAIR USE: COMPLIANCE GUIDELINES FOR FACULTY Reduce your legal liability by better understanding how to interpret and apply copyright law to teaching, research, and scholarship. Join Steven McDonald, Kevin Smith, and Academic Impressions online in February 2013 for this two-part webcast series; our expert instructors will walk you through many sample scenarios. The Georgia State University Case: Takeaways Of the 99 instances of infringement cited against Georgia State University in the plaintiff’s suit, 25 were withdrawn […]

Summer Bridge Programs: Impact and Tips for Success

Amid growing pressure on student retention and completion rates, much of the current research on factors in student success emphasizes both the importance of early intervention with at-risk students and increased attention to obstacles that confront students in the first weeks of their first term, including academic underpreparedness and the transition from the rigor, study hours, and study skills needed in high school to those needed in college. More institutions are turning to summer bridge and mentoring programs to help bridge the gap between senior year at high school and freshman year at college. To learn more, we turned this week to Wayne Jackson, director of multicultural academic and support services at the University of Central Florida. Jackson is a two-time national retention award recipient: the 2010 National Association of Academic Advising (NACADA) Outstanding Institutional Advising Program Certificate of Merit for his leadership in directing the Seizing Opportunities for Achievement and Retention (SOAR) summer bridge program, and the 2003 Noel-Levitz Retention Excellence Award for his work in directing the Minority Mentoring Program at The College of New Jersey. SOAR is worth examining as a model of an effective program. One of the oldest summer bridge programs in the US, SOAR […]

Your Institution’s Value Proposition: Affordability or Employability?

A few years ago, we interviewed W. Kent Barnds at Augustana College because we noticed his college had an especially proactive plan for talking with applicants, admits, and their families about both the value of attending that specific institution and about the return on their investment. While the national conversation about completion and outcomes has become more complex since, we think these interviews with W. Kent Barnds are even more relevant today. ________________________________________________________ Originally published in 2012 As the economy continues a slow recovery and media reports about student loan default persist, it’s increasingly critical to communicate to prospective students how a college degree from your institution is worth the investment. But this important conversation needs to move beyond accurately estimating net price to demonstrating how your campus can deliver the outcomes students need – strong professional skills, employability, and earning potential. This week, we reached out to W. Kent Barnds, vice president of enrollment, communication, and planning at Augustana College, who has made some significant strides in reframing those early conversations. Shifting the Conversation Barnds has become increasingly concerned with what he calls a “collision of expectations,” in which the federal government and the public expect institutions of higher […]