Understanding the student engagement software space
Today’s higher education landscape is full of challenges. Enrollment rates have declined for the past decade, and retention has been on the same trajectory. More than ever, higher education institutions must focus on continuous improvement. They must be able to prove that their programs are effective and intervene when students fall off course.
High levels of engagement are an excellent indicator of success, which has led to the development of several student engagement software solutions. With so many options, knowing which software is best for your institution’s goals is essential. The right one is a complete suite of solutions that incorporate student engagement into a holistic view of your progress toward your objectives.
How student engagement data informs institutional decision-making
Higher education institutions can now use real-time information to inform decision-making. In the era of declining enrollment and student retention, engagement data is among the most important. Some of the many ways that engagement data benefits higher education institutions include:
Enhance your overall performance: Data analysis provides valuable insights into resource allocation, student performance, enrollment patterns, student outcomes, and more. You can use this information to inform your strategic planning and drive a culture of continuous improvement.
Gain insights into student behavior and performance: Data provides insight into student engagement, demographics, and academic performance. You can use data to understand which courses are successful and which need improvement. Analyzing data on student demographics can help you engage students from diverse backgrounds. You can also use it to gauge the effectiveness of your student support services and identify improvement opportunities that boost retention.
Identify at-risk students and improve retention: One of the most important benefits of data in higher education is that it allows you to be proactive about student support and retention. Analyzing data on student behavior means you can identify students at risk of dropping out and intervene with targeted support to get them back on track to graduation.
Improve teaching effectiveness: Student engagement, performance, and satisfaction data allow you to identify areas for improvement and provide targeted career development opportunities to your faculty.
Integrate personalized learning and adaptive education: By analyzing student engagement and performance data, you can develop customized learning plans tailored to each student’s unique needs and goals. Real-time data on course engagement and success is invaluable in developing new courses or tweaking existing ones to meet changing student needs.
Optimize course offerings: With data analysis, you can identify popular courses and ones that fall short of meeting student needs. Data on enrollment patterns and course evaluations can inform what courses you offer and when. You can identify which courses engage students and which are causing disengagement and poor performance. Then, you can better understand why different courses perform how they do so you can use your resources effectively.
Predict student success: Past data on student performance allows you to build predictive models that forecast student outcomes, including graduation rates, retention rates, and academic success.
Key considerations when choosing student engagement software
With new technology changing how we track student engagement, you have many engagement software options. Some considerations when you choose student engagement software include:
Seamless integration: Your student engagement software should integrate with your existing learning management system (LMS) and other third-party solutions. Focus on strong interoperability and ensure your software solutions work well together.
Innovative tracking and reporting capabilities: When your student engagement software can track student engagement, gather feedback, and analyze and report on this data, you have a tailored strategy.
Communication and collaboration: One of the cornerstones of improvement is aligning around a common goal. When your stakeholders can communicate and collaborate, you can enhance the student experience. Your solution should connect your campus so your teams can access real-time data and tweak their engagement strategies in response.
Scalability and customization: A one-size-fits-all solution limits your opportunities to provide personalized education. Your student engagement platform should enable you to reach students where they are and be fully customizable to suit your values and goals. Look for a system with high levels of personalization and scalability so your engagement software grows and changes as you do.
Customer service and support: Your solution should be accessible and user-friendly, but you also want to know you have knowledgeable customer support when needed. Choose a student engagement solution that offers robust customer support.
Compliance with data security and privacy standards: Education is in the top five industries targeted by cybercriminals globally. Your student engagement solution collects student and faculty data in various ways, so it should be able to protect it. As engagement data becomes more readily available, any provider you use must be up to date with data privacy regulations.
Innovative data analytics: Data without analytics is simply noise. Look for a student engagement solution that gathers, analyzes, and synthesizes your data into actionable reports.
An overview of leading student engagement solutions
The power of student engagement data is clear. In response, various student engagement solutions have come to the fore. Each option offers excellent data analytics capabilities that have the power to transform your institution, and your choice ultimately comes down to your institution’s unique needs and goals.
The leading student engagement software options include:
Watermark
With over twenty years of experience leveraging student engagement data to boost student success, Watermark has used data analytics to develop cutting-edge student success technologies. The integrated Educational Impact Suite (EIS) gathers and synthesizes data into actionable reports. It empowers you to transform student success and engagement, boost retention, support your assessments, and use real-time data to improve the student experience.
Watermark offers a holistic approach to student success with a suite of innovative tools that drive institutional outcomes:
Student Success & Engagement: With Watermark Student Success & Engagement, you can make students the center of your strategy with one unified platform. You can create personalized roadmaps that elevate learning and receive alerts when students veer off course. You’ll understand how to support these students based on data and get them back on track. This solution offers predictive analytics capabilities, which help you determine which students to prioritize. You can offer them support through a native mobile app that meets them where they are, boosting engagement when they need the most support.
Accreditation readiness solutions: Watermark’s accreditation readiness solutions help you adopt and maintain a posture of continuous improvement. They streamline accreditation review and reporting, gathering data and turning it into actionable insights. You can leverage these insights to boost student engagement while pursuing your accreditation goals.
Course Evaluations & Surveys: With Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys, you can incorporate student feedback into your improvement initiatives. It offers deep LMS integrations, which increase response rates and give you access to qualitative and quantitative data on student success. Students can also respond via smartphone, increasing the chances of gathering meaningful engagement data.
Curriculum Strategy: Watermark Curriculum Strategy supports complete collaboration as you build and share a curriculum to engage students. You can use student feedback to support decision-making and map a cohesive curriculum that aligns with your overarching goals.
Faculty Success: Use faculty activity data to drive student engagement with Watermark Faculty Success. This tool creates a central hub for faculty activity and allows you to support your faculty as they progress in their careers,
Unified assessment practices: With Watermark, you get a comprehensive view of your institution’s performance, making it simple to identify improvement opportunities. This comprehensive tool lets you build engaging assessment practices based on real-time results. You can design, administer, and analyze assessments from one user-friendly hub, monitoring progress throughout each cycle.
Watermark’s extensive suite of solutions creates a connected campus focused on student success. Advanced data analytics, reporting, and communications transform your data into actionable insights. You can identify improvement opportunities and engage with students to keep them on track for degree completion.
EAB
Formerly known as the Education Advisory Board, EAB serves all levels of education, from K-12 and beyond.
Navigate360: Navigate360 is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that focuses on supporting the entire student journey. It allows you to automate, scale, and personalize student support services. It gives faculty more time to spend on students and allows you to make meaningful connections with them from the recruitment phase.
Starfish: EAB’s Starfish platform provides insight into student data and emphasizes early alerts and intervention. It helps you identify and support at-risk students with academic support services and a strong student support network.
The primary limitation of EAB solutions is that they are separate platforms. You need to implement both to get the most from your data, which can be costly. In contrast, a solution like Watermark offers a suite of tools that integrate seamlessly into one central platform.
Element451
Element451 is an AI student engagement platform that aims to streamline communications and boost student engagement. It provides personalized communications with students to keep them engaged and thriving. The various solutions include:
Element Discovery: Element Discovery is a generative search solution that simplifies access to student information. It’s an AI-powered tool that streamlines recruitment and delivers instant search results that empower students with the necessary information. By providing fast, personalized responses, you can engage students.
Element Bolt: The family of Bolt AI features helps you serve more students, providing 24/7 assistance in any language. Your faculty and administrative teams also have access to AI to help them complete various tasks. Element Bolt comes with various AI assistants, including AI insights, to help you inform decision-making.
Element Ignite: Element Ignite is a tool suite that forms a CRM and marketing automation platform. It provides AI assistants for faculty and students, automated workflows, and integration with your existing tools.
Element Engage: Element Engages offers several student engagement features to facilitate personalized student engagement with AI. It provides built-in tools for student engagement, survey management, and more.
Civitas’ Learning Student Impact Platform uses data analytics to boost retention and support students through their academic journeys. It offers four primary solutions:
Administrative and Initiative Analytics: This solution provides a deeper understanding of the factors influencing each student. It provides a holistic view of each student and helps you uncover the best tactics to support individuals and student groups through to completion.
Course Demand Analytics: Civitas Course Demand Analytics centralizes course data and monitors real-time enrollment to help you build accurate course schedules.
Advising Analytics and Workflow: With this solution, you can coordinate student success initiatives with proactive advising services. It gathers student information in one place, allowing your team to collaborate in student support. Your staff can identify and engage with at-risk students.
Academic Planning and Student Scheduling: Civitas planning, registration, and scheduling tools allow students and advisors to collaborate through academic planning on a shared platform. Faculty can monitor adjustments and communicate directly with students to help them align their choices with advisor recommendations.
Civitas’ software solutions focus primarily on predictive analytics and improving scheduling and retention rates. Student engagement solutions like Watermark work with your existing academic programs, LMS, and assessment processes. Civitas also leverages quantitative data. The ideal solution uses qualitative and quantitative data to see the complete picture.
New technology trends in student engagement software
Student engagement solutions have proved their worth. As more institutions realize the benefits of this technology, we can expect innovations that make it even more effective. Technology trends in education software are evolving to include:
AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics in student success: AI and machine learning will continue to provide an increasingly detailed context for decision-making. They add agility and efficiency to approaching student engagement in and outside the classroom. AI-powered systems and predictive analytics can analyze past and current data to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses and provide tailored support at crucial moments.
Experiential learning tools within engagement platforms: Experiential learning has always been a powerful tool in student success. Today’s technology combines experiential learning with student engagement platforms, allowing students to practice their skills and apply their knowledge. They can develop practical skills and gain real-world experience while you maintain the right levels of engagement and support.
Collaborative approaches to student engagement: One of the main benefits of student engagement data is the connectivity it supports. More opportunities exist for collaboration, discussion, and problem-solving than ever. Faculty and administrators can work together to tackle student engagement challenges, and everyone has the same real-time data to inform their decisions and boost engagement.
Measuring the impact of student engagement platforms
When you invest in a student engagement solution, you need to understand how it benefits your institution. You can use student engagement more effectively if you direct it to your strategic objectives. Some strategies for tracking the effectiveness of engagement platforms on student learning outcomes include:
Provide readers with strategies for tracking the effectiveness of engagement software on student learning outcomes, including:
Establish clear metrics and goals: The first step to measuring the impact of your student engagement platform is to decide what to measure in the first place. Engagement metrics include course completion, enrollment, and class attendance. You can also customize engagement metrics for each cohort to weigh them differently. For example, student engagement looks entirely different to a history student than to an engineering student. The former would include much time in the classroom, while the latter could be lab time.
Use student surveys and other feedback mechanisms: Who better to provide insight on student engagement than the students themselves? Create a culture where students can share their honest opinions, and use your holistic engagement solution to deliver surveys to students where they feel comfortable.
Consider qualitative and quantitative data: Academic performance and class attendance are easy to measure but offer limited insight. Use your surveys and other feedback mechanisms to collect students’ qualitative data to better understand their engagement. You can use this information to provide the right support services and see them through to completion.
Boost student engagement with Watermark
Understanding the student engagement software space is essential to maintain agility in the higher education landscape. When you have all the information about the latest solution, you can decide which solution best suits your institutional needs.
Watermark Student Success & Engagement goes beyond graduation rates, providing real-time data that enhances your decision-making. As part of our EIS, this tool forms part of a holistic approach to student engagement. We create a connected campus with a common goal. Our experience team will get you up and running quickly, and support you as you explore and leverage your data-driven insights.
