Exploring StREAM@Leeds with your tutee:
Student Learning Journey One

In this three-part series, we talk you through examples shared with us by an experienced Academic Personal Tutor on how they have used StREAM@Leeds in their meetings.

These examples focus on meetings where the tutor and tutee have explored the student's Dashboard through conversations together, and how doing so has impacted the support and guidance they were able to provide. Whilst examples are based on real interactions all names and data have been anonymised.

In this example, the tutor uses the data in StREAM@Leeds to reassure their student.

Our student

Jack is a very engaged second year student who is always looking for ways to improve and perform at his best.

During our meeting at the end of Semester One, Jack mentioned that he was not sure whether he was on course to achieving his attainment goals. Although Jack felt he was engaging with his studies, he was concerned that he may not be doing as much as his peers.

Knowing Jack’s attitude towards his studies and having briefly checked his StREAM@Leeds Dashboard prior to the meeting, I felt that seeing his StREAM@Leeds data in person could be a reassurance he was on the right track. I asked Jack if he would be interested in looking at his StREAM@Leeds Dashboard together, and although he had never accessed it himself before, he was keen to do so.

Starting with the Learning Journey Map

Opening his Dashboard, we looked at the CURRENT ENGAGEMENT tab. The Learning Journey Map on this tab plots Jack's Engagement Ratings. Focusing on the Learning Journey Map, we could both quickly spot that Jack's Engagement Ratings for the past four weeks had been largely in the top two categories (High and Very High, shown as 4 and 5 on the Learning Journey Map), however, over the last few days it had decreased into Active (shown as 3 on the Learning Journey Map).

Using averages for context

Whilst Jack was pleased that his engagement over the first few weeks was shown to be High, he asked me whether he should be concerned with this recent drop. I explained to Jack that the ways that students interact with their courses digitally will change throughout the academic year. To illustrate this I clicked on the Cohort Average option above the Learning Journey Map, a red dotted line was then added to his Learning Journey Map, this showed the average engagement of peers on the same course as him.

With his cohort’s averages now visible on the Learning Journey Map, Jack was able to quickly see that although his Engagement Ratings had recently dipped, this was reflective of his peers. He was also very pleased to see that he had on several occasions been engaging more than the average of his peers with digital systems. Despite being reassured, Jack was still keen to understand why the dip in his cohort’s Engagement Ratings had occurred.

Using the Resources tab to identify where engagement is taking place

We then looked at the RESOURCES tab on his profile. On this tab, we could both see that Jack had been accessing Minerva very consistently over the last four weeks and had been attending a lot of online lectures in Blackboard Collaborate and MS Teams.

We also noticed that in the first two weeks of this period, Jack had been using Mediasite (lecture capture recordings) and accessing the Library, but that he hadn’t been doing so more recently. This made sense to Jack, as he recognised that during the first two weeks he was writing an essay, so was spending more time in the Library studying, whilst also watching back older lectures on Mediasite relevant to his topic. I told Jack that this was perfectly understandable, and the fact he was able to quickly recognise and take stock of his approach to studying was a great skill.

I also explained that whilst having higher Engagement Ratings may indicate that he is using a range of digital resources consistently, he should also recognise that throughout his studies there are ways of engaging which are not taken into consideration within StREAM@Leeds, such as attending lectures in person.

 

Conclusions

Overall, I felt that Jack benefitted greatly from looking at his StREAM@Leeds Dashboard in our APT meeting, as it helped reassure him that he was in fact as engaged as I knew he was. Jack found being able to see his Engagement Ratings alongside his cohort’s average was an easy way for him to spot the natural ebb and flow of the course’s requirements, and that seeing when he was interacting with specific digital resources like Mediasite helped him recognise his own study patterns.

I did, however, remind Jack at the end of our discussion the limitations of what StREAM@Leeds can tell him, that he should only consider it as a snapshot of his digital activity, and that he should always be mindful of all the other great work he has been doing throughout the semester.