“In the field of educational data analysis, we, as VU, and specifically with the Education Analytics team, are one of the frontrunners in the Netherlands. However, there is much more potential in analytics, and this merger allows us to collaborate better and learn faster from each other. As a result: more and complete insights for the VU.”
What does the Education Analytics team do?
Education Analytics is a data service within Educational Policy and Advice. The team analyses education, assessment, and student data with the goal of improving the inflow, throughput, and outflow of students (student success) and the associated quality of the education (policy) in all phases of their education. Important applications include the prediction of the number of applications and enrolments, the progress of study progress over time, insights into stumbling blocks, and student satisfaction from the national student survey and curriculum evaluation.
Merging diverse skills
Ay May Sinnett, the newly appointed team leader, brings a fresh perspective to the new team with a background in connecting data, tech, and business. “With a team of eight experienced professionals and four enthusiastic student assistants, we have a very broad skill set, ranging from programming to data integration to data analysis. A team that can thoroughly research questions and explore new data sources for current insights. The most important thing for me is that everyone in the team is proud of their work. For me, that is key to improving our educational quality.”
Corneel den Hartogh, interim team leader, with his four years of experience at VU Amsterdam and a background at SURF, has played a key role in developing enrolment forecasts and study progress analyses. “Both teams focus on improving the quality of education(policy), so if you look at it from the “goal” perspective, it makes perfect sense that the teams belong together. They have only merged since December, and we already see good opportunities for richer insights and ideas for innovative analyses.”
Shifting service needs
Their primary goal remains to improve the quality of education(policy). “We see that the demand for our services is changing more rapidly, and therefore we need to be (more) agile: nowadays, the average person measures just about everything, so in education too, there is an increasing eagerness to find answers in data. And it's not just that demand is rising, it's also the depth of the questions and the speed with which it can be delivered. So, we will need to work on a way of providing the information and the speed, but also be keen on its use,” Corneel explains.
“To actually generate the right insights and draw conclusions in specific subject areas, context and interpretation are necessary. That is why it is very important for our team to have such a broad skillset.” adds Ay May.
Impact on educational practice
Collaboration with other departments and disciplines within VU Amsterdam remains essential. Step by step, they explore more data so they can generate better and more precise insights. “For example, within Canvas and other learning management systems (LMS) like FeedbackFruits, there is information on how courses are structured and what exact actions students take. We are very interested in the correlations that can be made about study success and student satisfaction,” Ay May says.
“At the same time, there's also more sensitive data, such as personal feedback. We are currently in discussion with the privacy officer to ensure that we can receive interesting data on one hand, but on the other hand, not see any privacy-sensitive data. We could then analyse this and find, for example, that the use of certain didactic tools is associated with better grades. VU Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) could take such insights into account in supporting teachers, workshops, or further educational research, thus having a positive impact on educational practice and the learning experience -and results of students,” Corneel concludes.
For more information about the Education Analytics team, contact vu-analytics@vu.nl.