In one semester, Indiana University of Pennsylvania is able to keep 50 at-risk students after giving them additional support identified through the Othot Student Success Platform
Othot, a Liaison Company—used by colleges and universities to make more informed decisions using advanced analytics—has released a new more affordable Student Success Essential offering for higher education institutions. This newest Othot analytics platform gives student success directors and institutional research analysts powerful analytical capabilities to identify students at risk of “stopping out,” then provide those students with the supports that will keep them enrolled and on track to complete their college education. Student Success Essential is the newest product in the Othot Student Success product line. Tweet this news.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) used Student Success Premier—which is the first student success product launched by Othot in March 2020. IUP ran qualitative research on at-risk populations and identified factors that differed between students who returned to the University and those who did not. With that data, IUP gave those at-risk students extra support and in the end, 50 of them stayed enrolled when otherwise it was very likely they would not have persisted.
Student Success Essential is designed to help colleges who may be limited by funding or access to data, to still have access to a powerful analytics platform at a lower cost and with a quick-start implementation. Even using a limited data set, significant progress can be made in improving retention.
“There are patterns and indicators for why students drop out of college that can be identified but without advanced analytics, college enrollment managers are operating in the dark,” said Fred Weiss, CEO of Othot. “We are offering ‘Student Success Essential’ as a lighter solution because while not every college has the capability to utilize all the deep capabilities of our Premier offering, nearly every college can benefit from Othot’s unique machine learning and AI analysis of several basic data points.”
Mr Weiss added, “Othot is the solution that makes data visible, so that it informs administrator decisions and students can receive the support they need. Our team of data scientists and success managers are partners with the institution to ensure that universities have measurable success such as what IUP experienced between the fall and spring semester.”
Chris Kitas is IUP’s Executive Director of Institutional Research Planning & Assessment. When asked how Othot helped them he said, “Othot’s platform provides the types of real-time, in-depth AI that helps affect change. For instance, why would a student with a 3.5 GPA leave? What was wrong? I had my hypotheses. The platform opened my eyes and provided answers to some of the questions that we had. It gives us all a better sense of where we’re going with our students, and how we can make sure they’re retained and graduate.”
The Othot Student Success Essential platform make successes like this happen by enabling institutions to:
- Identify At-Risk Students – Know which students are at-risk and the reasons why to gain a better understanding of retention on campus
- Recognize Impactful Interventions – Optimize student success resources, identifying which interventions will meaningfully improve retention on your campus
- Manage Advisor Priorities – Use institution data to strengthen relationships between advisors and their students
- Guide Graduation with Reasonable Debt – Monitor changes in student financial needs over the academic year, matching their needs with available financial aid resources
- Secure Transfer Student Retention – Personalize transfer student retention strategies, knowing which interventions are most impactful on this population
Othot is offering this new Student Success Essential analytics product at an affordable price with a rapid-launch sequence to quickly ramp up at a time of pandemic-constrained budgets.
Othot provides analytics tools so that institutions of higher education can make better informed decisions to maximize student enrollment, success, and advancement. At a time when colleges face several challenges from the pandemic’s effect to the projections of significant drops in enrollment (see Futureproofing Institutions Against the Demographic Cliff, analyzing enrollment trends and institution-level data from more than 450 four-year colleges and universities), the ability to more deeply analyze and understand data is increasingly important.
At IUP, university administrators were interested in understanding barriers to retention and persistence, especially in light of increasing challenges in recruiting new students due to college-aged population declines. “We were anticipating some [adjustments] as demographics changed, of course, but what we started to see was that our market share of students really began to decline,” noted Patricia McCarthy, Ph.D., vice president for enrollment management at IUP where Othot is in use. “When I analyzed the retention numbers, I recognized that there was a strategic opportunity to regain ground. The Othot tool is a critical part of our overall long-term strategy, and we’re seeing positive results and a solid return on our investment.”
Watch an introductory video of Othot’s Student Success Essential Platform here.
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