UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State instructors can now access "Course Insights," a learning analytics tool developed in-house by the Data Empowered Learning team in Penn State IT.
The analytics in Course Insights empower instructors to explore student engagements and learner activity in their courses, helping them shape pedagogical strategies, course administration and out-of-class student support needs.
The core feature of Course Insights is a rolling, seven-day average activity graph designed to help instructors understand how an individual student is engaging with online course material in comparison to their peers. The tool also provides instructors with insight into student demographics, such as semester standing, cumulative GPA and other data points that summarize the population of students enrolled in a course.
Course Insights has been in a limited access pilot until this semester, with about 250 instructors participating through December 2024. Now, everyone who is listed in LionPATH as the instructor of record and has completed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) tutorial can access the tool. The developers behind Course Insights have also provided a resource hub to aid users including instructions for integrating Course Insights with Canvas.
“Course Insights delivers the data that instructors have said they need most,” said Kathy Bieschke, senior vice provost. “This is a huge step forward for student support. We know that interventions early in the semester, sometimes before there are any significant grades, lead to better student outcomes. An early intervention could mean the difference between a student earning a failing grade or retaking a course, delaying their graduation and costing them more. Penn State is fortunate to have the capacity to create our own, home-grown learning analytics tool designed to give data and insights directly to instructors.”
The Data Empowered Learning team worked with numerous stakeholders across Penn State during Course Insights’ development, including The Grove Center for Excellence in Science Education in the Eberly College of Science, who are committed to fostering student success through innovative teaching practices and real-world experiences. Jackie Bortiatynski, teaching professor and director of The Grove Center, said faculty in her college are keen to act on data and that Course Insights simplifies the information gathering they were already doing.
"The tool allows instructors to gather data about their students in real time, helping them adjust their teaching methods as the semester progresses," Bortiatynski said. “For example, when working with first-year students, instructors can use the tool to identify specific needs, such as time management issues, and make data-driven decisions about course design and student support.”
Course Insights is available to instructors of both graduate and undergraduate courses.
“Course Insights will help to open new doors for using analytics to support academic success, and we are excited to roll this out to graduate-level courses,” said Michael Verderame, senior associate dean, J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School. “Many graduate students are balancing their educational journey with family and life commitments, and the real-time data from Course Insights can help instructors identify students early in the semester who may face significant challenges completing their coursework.”
The Data Empowered Learning team earned the platinum-level Learning Impact Award at the June 2023 1EdTech conference for their work on Course Insights. The team is also responsible for the development of Elevate, which provides learning analytics to the Penn State academic advising community.
Any units or departments interested in training for Course Insights should contact the Data Empowered Learning team at delteam@psu.edu.