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

In the second of the three-part series of student journey examples, our tutor continues to demonstrate how introducing StREAM@Leeds data into Academic Personal Tutor meetings could benefit students. In this journey, the tutor uses StREAM@Leeds to support a mature student.

Whilst examples are based on real interactions all names and data have been anonymised.

Our student

We know Simran as a highly engaged mature student in her first year of undergraduate study, but she feels like she might be struggling.

In response to an email our tutor sent out to all her first year undergraduate tutees around the eighth week of teaching, asking them how they were doing and whether they would like to have a meeting, Simran reached out to have a conversation.

Preparing for the meeting

Prior to their meeting, our tutor decided to take a look at Simran’s StREAM@Leeds Dashboard, starting with the CURRENT ENGAGEMENT tab. Looking at her Learning Journey Map, they could see that initially, the majority of Semester One appeared as they expected: Simran’s Engagement Ratings were consistently in the higher categories (shown as 5 and 4 on the map), and frequently matched or exceeded her cohort’s average lines (the red dotted line). However, they noticed a slight dip in her activity around week eight (19/11 onwards), coinciding with when she had been in contact. Our tutor therefore decided this may be a good starting point for their meeting the following week.

Contextual insight by comparing digital activity of peers

During the meeting, Simran mentioned that she was concerned that she hadn’t managed to do as much work over the past week as she would have liked, and was having difficulty keeping motivated. Being a mature student, she mentioned having to manage various additional responsibilities, and that she felt she wasn’t able to commit as much of her time to her studies like most of her peers.

After this discussion, our tutor suggested to Simran that they could take a look at her StREAM@Leeds Dashboard together. When looking at her Learning Journey Map, Simran straight away noticed that for the majority of the time she was matching the level of digital activity of her peers (her blue line in relation to the red dotted line), which she said was reassuring.

She then quickly noticed the recent dip in her Engagement Ratings, and was again able to recognise this was around the same time she had become concerned about how much time she had dedicated to her studies.

Understanding the dip in engagement

Our tutor then opened up the RESOURCES tab to look more closely at what specific digital resources she had been using recently. Looking at the various Resource Activity cards, together they noticed that although Simran had been frequently interacting with lots of different systems over the past few weeks, there was a five to six day period where she had no interactions. After a little more discussion, Simran and our tutor identified that around this time Simran had been dealing with some problems at home, and as a result had missed a few lectures.

Considering personal circumstances and signposting to support networks

After looking at her StREAM@Leeds Dashboard, Simran and our tutor began discussing her additional responsibilities and what support was available to her at the University in managing them. Our tutor also began discussing whether she was struggling with Imposter Syndrome, as she felt she was always comparing herself to her peers who didn’t share her experiences as a mature student. Our tutor then signposted her to various support networks in their School, as well as the wider University, in an attempt to improve her sense of belonging on her course.

Following-up

Finally, our tutor returned to Simran’s StREAM@Leeds Dashboard after their meeting and noticed that her Engagement Ratings had again continued to match her cohort’s averages (her blue line mirrored the trend of the cohort red dotted line).

Our tutor had a follow up meeting with Simran in Semester Two, and was pleased to hear that she was feeling more engaged with her studies since our previous discussion. Simran mentioned that she had been taking advantage of some of the support our tutor had signposted her to, and had even checked StREAM@Leeds herself on occasion to support her learning.

 

Conclusions

Overall, whilst Simran was able to recognise herself that she had begun to struggle with her studies before accessing StREAM@Leeds, our tutor felt looking at her learning analytics together allowed them to spot exactly when Simran's engagement had begun to drop, and therefore identify the circumstances that had led to this. Our tutor also felt that looking at her analytics reassured Simran that for the majority of the time she had been keeping pace with her peers despite her differing circumstances, but at the same time recognise that there will be times where these other circumstances take priority.