Improving the student experience at the University of Arizona is an ongoing initiative that is worked towards by every department and college at every level of the institution. As the terms “college-readiness” and “student success” continue to shift and align with the social and economic landscapes of higher education, UAIR has spent the past fiscal year collaborating with campus colleagues to support the institutional data needs of the faculty serving as course instructors on campus.

In an effort to better meet student educational needs and identify new ways for the university to address potential inequities in the classroom, UAIR served as an executive sponsor of the Analytics Certificate for Course Equity and Student Success (ACCESS) Fellows program. With Chief Data Officer Ravneet Chadha signing off on the program and several members of UAIR serving on the program’s Advisory Board, UAIR was a key partner in the fellowship’s development. The program focused on improving access to student and course data so that instructors felt empowered to redesign their courses to reduce educational barriers and inequities for their students. A key deliverable of this program was the development of the Student Course Outcomes Dashboard—a dashboard designed to guide instructors through their own courses with the student experience in mind, plus an increased access to course outcome and student data for faculty serving as course instructors.

In partnership with University Center for Assessment, Teaching, & Technology (UCATT) and Student Success & Retention Innovation (SSRI), this fellowship aimed to provide faculty with access to data that supports equitable improvements to student courses. This project was funded by the Provost Investment Fund (PIF) and, as the facilitator of the university’s Enterprise Data Warehouse, UAIR’s role was crucial in this grant-funded project.

Data-Driven Decisions & Dashboard Development

The Student Course Outcomes dashboard was designed to guide instructors through their course analytics using three orienting questions: “Who are my students?,” “What grades have my students historically earned in my class?,” and a final question with the same approach to “what grades have my students earned,” but using other outcomes such as “persistence at the university” or “persistence in major.”

Utilizing aggregated data to uncover the student experience with a specific class in mind can influence both the course’s design and outcomes. Instructors gain new insights on how to move forward with their course design when they have access to both student- and course-related data. While access to this course outcomes dashboard is still limited to fellowship participants, the potential benefit for the broader community of course instructors is clear, and plans are in place to make this dashboard more widely accessible in the 2024 fiscal year.

Empowering the University Through Equitable Change

In the spirit of supporting UArizona faculty and course instructors with access to more robust data, UAIR’s initiative to support equitable change through data at the university can be seen in much of its work over the past fiscal year. The continuation of the Faculty Pay Equity Study, in collaboration with the Office of the Provost, for tenure-track faculty is an ongoing project with yearly reharmonizations in place to identify necessary salary adjustments faculty.

Additionally, this fiscal year the Student Course Survey (SCS) dashboard was revitalized with an updated dashboard and data process that provides university instructors access to course survey responses in a form that is easily digestible and is connected to strategies for improvement. The SCS dashboard was a result of collaborative effort between UAIR, Faculty Affairs, and the SCS team in UCATT.

Innovating approaches to student success and course equity means that the faculty at our institution must see equitable changes to make equitable changes. Improving access to institutional data for faculty and course instructors is one way UAIR supports equitable change at the University of Arizona.