BLOG | Content Analytics Platform Now Helps Faculty Evaluate And Optimize Course Content

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New features provide real-time insight into how students engage with course content to inform instructional design and link content to outcomes

LOS ALTOS, CALIF. (June 30, 2016) — Intellus Learning announced today the launch of new content analytics features that will help educators understand how students are engaging with digital course materials and open educational resources. The platform enables faculty and instructional designers to access granular data, in real time, to track how and when students are engaging with academic content during their studies.

Surveys continue to show that cost is a leading reason why students do not purchase assigned textbooks and course materials. To level the playing field and reduce the cost to students, institutions are now using content analytics to maximize affordable academic resources that align with course-level learning objectives. Faculty and instructional designers can leverage these insights to match students with engaging, relevant content, improving student experience and outcomes.

“Affordability is a crucial priority for us at the CSU system, so we’ve undertaken efforts to help faculty use OER and digital content more effectively,” said Vice Provost Dennis Nef of California State University Fresno. “Despite increased investments of time and money in digital content and OER, most faculty and instructional designers have little understanding of how students navigate or respond to individual content items. The Intellus analytics layer brings us one step closer to unbundling content by enabling us to curate and select only from resources that are both instructionally relevant and also highly engaging for students, and better understand how students use that content.”

“We know that student engagement increases as we align course goals and design to industry best practices,” said Matthew Gunkel, Group Manager for eLearning Design & Services and Architect for eLearning Technology at Indiana University. “The platform Intellus provides allows faculty invaluable insights that can directly inform course design and improve course quality over time.”

While colleges and universities are awash in digital content, faculty and instructional designers have not previously been able to evaluate how students respond to individual content items, such as library and publisher content, OER, and digital course materials embedded in the LMS. With the advent of Intellus Analytics, faculty and instructional designers are able to evaluate course structure and content based on course-level learning objectives and differentiate content selections based on student preferences and abilities.

“With the vast array of instructional resources available to educators to support instruction, faculty and instructional designers often face an overwhelming task in selecting and curating content,” said David J. Kim, founder and CEO of Intellus Learning and an expert in the application of analytics in digital asset management and search marketing. “Our new analytics layer enables intelligent curation that considers relevance and student engagement, helping faculty pinpoint the resources that will have the greatest impact.”

In partnership with many institutions, Intellus Learning has now indexed over 45 million online learning resources (e.g., articles, books, videos, and digital content items) spanning major OER repositories, library archives, and publisher and institutional databases. Last fall, Intellus Learning launched a new platform designed to help faculty discover, review, and use the abundant digital resources, including OER, that are available within their colleges and universities.

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About Intellus Learning (www.intelluslearning.com😞 Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter.