Can your LMS data predict which students will need support?

Higher ed leaders often wonder: Can our LMS data predict which students will need support? The answer is yes. Learning Management System (LMS) data can help faculty, advisors, and administrators predict which students will need extra support, often as early as week two of the semester.

Today’s college students—and those set to arrive on campus in the next three to five years—are experiencing major academic challenges due to pandemic-related learning loss. Despite the valiant efforts of students, educators, and advisors across the country, readiness for college-level English, reading, science, and math are still low. In this environment, LMS data is critical in that it can help you identify students in need of support quickly.

In my work with schools to implement Edify, I’ve talked with many leaders who want to make better use of their LMS data. Below, I’ll explore how, when paired with pre-enrollment data, LMS data provides more detailed insights into students’ academic behaviors for faculty, advisors, and administrators to provide proactive and data-informed support to students facing challenges.

The recent influx of LMS data

There is more LMS data to work with now than there ever has been. With the sudden shift to online learning at the start of the pandemic, faculty, staff, and students had to rely on their LMS for their courses—for assignment submissions, engagement through discussion posts, and more. Since the pandemic, faculty, staff, and students sustained the use of the LMS with hybrid courses, and because they were now more familiar with the system.

Read More About the Student Readiness Crisis

LMS data offers deeper insights

LMS data allows institutions to move beyond a student’s past performance to gain a dynamic view of their current academic engagement. When SIS and LMS data are fed into a predictive model, insights can help faculty, advisors, and administrators tailor interventions to students in need of support while they still have time to course-correct. Pre-enrollment data such as high school grades, GPAs, and standardized test scores are static views of how a student may do in higher ed. But as institutions relax their testing requirements and more students struggle to adapt to college life, these become less reliable measures of how a student will perform. LMS data provides insights at the course level, increasing the likelihood of identifying students in need of support and enabling timely intervention.

Based on LMS data, faculty, advisors, and administrators can predict student support needs early in the semester, and:

• Implement an intervention campaign with students predicted to need high or medium levels of support using a CRM like Navigate360
• Focus advising conversations on the value of on-time assignment submissions and the optimal number of quiz attempts
• Arrange additional support offerings, like office hours, for students
• Adjust instruction, syllabus, or curriculum as appropriate

At John Carroll University (JCU), a small private four-year university, deans and advisors found that the insights generated by Edify’s LMS-Predicted Course Success Accelerator greatly enhanced their student support interventions. Faculty typically identified students who needed support about four to six weeks into the term. However, by analyzing students’ interactions with the LMS, they could generate alerts earlier, allowing them to proactively assist students and support their success.

See Edify’s LMS-Predicted Course Success Accelerator at Work

Predict support and intervene with near-real-time behavioral data

Persistent readiness gaps mean institutions need to provide proactive and data-informed support. LMS data provides actionable and real-time insights to help you do just that. And you can start now: not every single class or faculty member needs to be on top of their LMS utilization for there to be meaningful change. Start with the LMS data you have to reduce the time faculty spend on submitting early alerts, honor faculty time in using the LMS, offer an opportunity for faculty wanting to try new pedagogical approaches, and ultimately improve student outcomes.