Joe LeCluyse
Joe is passionate about helping institutions improve student success and attain strategic goals with a holistic approach.
Latest posts by Joe LeCluyse (see all)
- Student Success: It’s Everyone! - July 26, 2016
- Student Success No Longer Just a Buzz Word - May 23, 2016
- 4 Factors to Achieve Holistic Student Success - March 22, 2016
Student success has been a buzz word since I started working in higher education. The first time I understood what this truly meant was when I was a Dean (in the early 1990s). Quite accidentally, I learned a very critical question to ask of students: “Tell me why you are here.” Often the reply was, “Excuse me, what do you mean?” to which I responded, “Why are you at (name of institution)?”
In reply, more often than not, I got “Oh! I ….” and a wealth of information regarding the student would flow out: their reasons and goals for being at the institution, their hopes and dreams for their future, the challenges they foresaw to getting there, and much more I could not have foreseen. I learned to capture this information in notes which I printed off and put in a special folder I kept with the intent of following up with the students later. This information was priceless in helping to determine if the student felt successful at the institution.
This glimpse into student background and motivation played a large part in my reason for making the career move from higher education student personnel administration to student system software development. I was bound and determined to try to make our student systems so they would assist us with student success, rather than just being “record keeping systems.” The technology existed to be much more proactive and intervening with students in the pursuit of their goals, but the applications had not been developed.
Student Success More of a Theory
The short story is that through the late 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, schools reported that the student software systems we were designing “were right on the mark” for assisting in student success. Despite this, when it came to development of the applications, this functionality was “cut” due to urgency in getting out the releases.
Student success was great to talk about and sounded good, but its emphasis in reality was just a buzz word. Some specific schools developed their own solutions, and to this day those schools are noted for their holistic approach to student success. But in general, not much progress was made in developing software solutions that truly helped higher education personnel focus on student success in a holistic way.
New Normal: Student Success is Imperative
Then the recession hit and many things changed for the higher education culture. Our new normal included major changes in calls for accountability and funding methodologies. “Performance based funding” became a common phrase. “Student success” was suddenly on everyone’s lips and schools were saying to their software vendors “we need your help.” These student applications were no longer cut, but rather were suddenly at the forefront of what schools were demanding to best meet their daily activities.
The short story here is that software developers have made major strides in the last 5 years in providing tools to help the schools assist their students toward success. One area that has dramatically improved is early alert and monitoring student progress. As discussed in this blog last month, predictive analytics has received major emphasis. The advancements are exciting.
Let’s Move Beyond the Buzz Word
If we are to move beyond the buzz word though and make student success a reality, we need to be able to ask the critical question: “Why are you here?” We also need to be able to automatically respond in a proactive way through our software solutions.
I was recently involved in student focus groups sessions and heard some great specific examples of how we can integrate the software to improve our students’ experiences. One in particular: on the standardized admission tests and in many recruiting information gathering applications, we ask students about the areas they may need help with in their college life. Once their responses are in the system, responses should automatically be sent to students with the means to get assistance in these areas. One student said to me, “The school knows everything about me; I’m a business major. Why didn’t I get a notification about the prominent business speaker who spoke on campus last night? Even Amazon knows how to do that!” This has been another cultural change: students know what technology is capable of and expect it to perform accordingly.
Colleges and universities and the SIS/CRM software vendors need to work closely together to continue to develop applications that assist schools in addressing student success in a holistic way if a difference is truly to be made. Everyone seems to be on the right path, but must expand the view down the road if student success is to be achieved in greater magnitude and not just considered a buzz word.
This blog is right on target. Implementation is critical to student success and moving beyond the “buzz” words we use in education is not an easy task, but critical if we are to truly address and meet our students’ needs.
Well stated and most important for the future. Thanks, Joe.