New York, October 20, 2020 -- Macmillan Learning, a privately-held, family owned company, announced the launch of iClicker Insights today. The new retention survey and analytics software, which combines components of Macmillan Learning’s market leading classroom response system, with the student success expertise of its analytics and research team, was developed to help colleges support student success by reducing attrition, a problem estimated by the Department of Education to cost $16 billion annually that has been compounded by the Coronavirus pandemic.
iClicker combined its expertise in delivering technology solutions that capture student activity and feedback, with the assessment expertise of Macmillan Learning’s analytics and research team to provide early, actionable insights on students’ experiences inside and outside of the classroom. It works by integrating early trends on students’ course attendance, engagement, and self-reporting on key retention factors. This gives administrators and student support advocates a more holistic understanding of students’ early college experiences, helps to identify barriers to student success as early as possible, and informs intervention strategies that help keep students engaged and enrolled.
There are a number of reasons why students don’t succeed in college, from financial to personal reasons -- like feeling like they don’t belong or having other obligations. Additionally, numerous studies underscore the importance of class attendance on student outcomes and retention.
“For nearly twenty years iClicker has been regarded as the best classroom student engagement solution because it is pedagogically-sound and incredibly easy-to-use. With iClicker Insights, institutions now have an easily scalable way to quickly identify the students who may need additional support by using multiple data points like attendance, classroom engagement, and student self-reporting on key retention factors like their sense of belonging,” said Steven Ray, Vice President, iClicker.
Some of the ways institutions around the country have already begun to use iClicker Insights include:
- When COVID-19 required an unexpectedly quick transition to online learning, institutions like the University of Tennessee at Martin used iClicker Insights COVID-19 surveys to gauge the impact of the transition on students and identify specific intervention needs of individual students.
- The University of Missouri uses iClicker Insight’s brief student retention surveys to enhance its Student Success and Retention Department’s existing success initiatives. The survey helps administrators identify retention risks even earlier and target interventions to individual students’ most pressing needs.
- University of Houston’s Department of Housing and Residence Life uses iClicker Insights surveys to understand how students are acclimating to life on campus in a fall that looks very different than ever before. They’re using it this fall to understand how students are doing both inside and outside of their online classrooms.
- The University of Memphis used iClicker Insight’s automated attendance reporting analytics for early identification of students with troubling attendance patterns to direct interventions before the student fell too far behind in their coursework. Ryan Crews, Student Success Coordinator, University of Memphis said, “One of our biggest barriers to widespread attendance reporting has been the inability to make attendance reporting easy and accurate … With this tool, we are able to move beyond simply recording attendance and think strategically about how we help students work through issues that affect their class attendance.”
How it works
iClicker Insights offers comprehensive reports and dashboards from iClicker attendance, in-class engagement, and retention surveys. The actionable insights help pinpoint when students may benefit from additional academic or skills-based advising or counseling support and highlight any engagement trends within courses or across departments. Information from iClicker and the retention surveys can be uploaded into an institution’s existing LMS and student success solutions.
With iClicker Insights, critical information on class attendance -- one of the earliest and most significant indicators of student retention -- no longer winds up either buried or siloed within multiple departments. In addition to attendance, iClicker encourages students’ participation and engagement in class via active learning and can be used synchronously and asynchronously on laptops, mobile devices, or iClicker remotes.
The short, pre-built retention surveys in iClicker Insights collect and assess students’ self-reported motivation, experiences, and plans. By looking at critical non-cognitive factors, like homesickness, sense of belonging, campus engagement, and financial concerns, the surveys provide crucial context for student outreach efforts. The student retention surveys were created by assessment experts with more than twenty years experience in higher education. Two new COVID-related surveys were also created this past spring to help institutions understand and provide services to support students as they transitioned to online classes.
“With the pandemic still impacting many students’ experience in and out of the classroom, it’s more important than ever that institutions understand where students are struggling. By using surveys to pinpoint students' pain points, institutions are empowered to use their resources where they’re most needed. We’ve been able to apply what we’ve learned from decades of partnership with more than 150 institutions to help them do that more efficiently, and have seen firsthand the impact that it has had on student success and retention,” explained Dr. Sherry Woosley, Macmillan Learning’s Senior Director of Analytics and Research.
For more information on iClicker Insights’ visit: iclicker.com/institutions
About iClicker
iClicker was developed by a team of physicists/educational researchers out of the University of Illinois and is currently used at more than 1,200 Institutions by more than 5,000 Instructors and more than 10M students.
About Macmillan Learning
Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes. Our engaging content is developed in partnership with the world's best researchers, educators, administrators, and developers. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or join our Macmillan Community.
