The COMPASS (Comprehensive Analytics for Student Success) project is a cross-functional initiative focused on undergraduate student success. The project draws on staff within the Office of the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning, the Office of Institutional Research, and the Office of Information Technology in strong partnership with the directors of undergraduate academic advising in each school, as well as academic administrators throughout the University.
This multi-part project focuses on bringing relevant student data to campus advisors, faculty, and administrators with the goal of providing actionable information to improve undergraduate student outcomes.
COMPASS is focused on building a set of Cognos reports for academic advisors that will allow for greater flexibility in student data retrieval and analysis, leading to faster turn around on key student support actions including intervention and outreach. Reports are also provided for faculty and academic administrators.
As we expand, COMPASS will delve into exploratory data analysis to maximize our insights into student data and reveal areas for potential increased reporting on risk factors, recommended changes to curriculum, and improved academic support resources.
Page Contents
What is COMPASS?
COMPASS is:
- A homegrown UCI solution to assist with effective and efficient data analysis and use
- A series of reports provided to relevant academic support staff, faculty, and academic administrators
- A data set including data from Admissions, Registrar, and other key partners
- A campuswide service meant to assist advisors, faculty, and administration with timely data to assist with outreach and intervention activities
- A partnership including subject matter experts in pedagogy, institutional research, administration, and information technology
Please contact us if you have any questions about what COMPASS is, how the reports and data feeds work, or if you would like to partner with us.
COMPASS is not:
- A predictive analytics engine: the Data Science arm of COMPASS works under the direction of the Vice Provost of Teaching & Learning to investigate questions related to student success, but is not a predictive analytics unit, nor is COMPASS a predictive analytics toolkit or engine.
- An email or outreach platform: users can export data to facilitate bulk outreach activities, but COMPASS itself does not do this
- A discipline-specific service: we work with all of the academic schools and many units within the Office of the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning.
- A direct data provider: we partner with key data owners on campus to provide data for reports, but COMPASS provides data via reports, not direct database access or data exports
Descriptive Analytics
Academic advisors are provided reports that identify intervention and outreach opportunities. These reports display student information through a variety of lenses, including ways to look at demographics, academic performance, and academic progress.
Faculty have access to aggregate information on the demographic and academic makeup of courses, as well as information on grade distributions.
Academic administrators have access to aggregate information on demographics and academic performance within their schools.
Data Science
The Data Science side of COMPASS is an evolving effort to leverage the extensive data sets available to COMPASS to research questions related to student success. These questions involve areas including:
• Year-one to Year-two Retention
• Curricular Pathways
• DFW Impacts on Retention
History
Analytics can be a nebulous idea. The various audiences, data sources, applications, and questions to be answered make a project of this complexity hard to define.
Over the summer of 2016, in an effort to determine a grounded strategy for analytics at UC Irvine, the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and the Chief Information Officer requested that a review of opportunities and challenges be assessed and reported upon.
While engaging in this analysis, it has became apparent that some low-hanging fruit exist that can be acted upon in the near term. These are represented by the undergraduate academic advisor reports listed above, focused on providing undergraduate student data to advisors in formats that they previously did not have available.
The descriptive analytics project represents the first of many efforts to be recommended as possibilities to improve student outcomes and support student success. Other projects will focus on faculty, curriculum planners, and students themselves.
Descriptive Analytics Milestones
2016: Proof-of-concept reports for demographics (outreach) and academic probation (intervention) delivered to advisors
2017: Expanded offerings to advisors, including insights into lower-division writing progress & course grade distribution
2018: First report for faculty, course demographics insights, launched. Course demographics and academic pathway reports delivered to advisors.
2019: Launched five reports for academic administrators to provide information about demographics and academic performance within majors.
Executive Leadership
Compass is a cross-functional project with leadership provided by:
- Ryan Cherland, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Institutional Research & Decision Support
- Kian Colestock, Interim Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor
- Michael Dennin, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
Project Team
The team leading teaching & learning analytics data and reports development includes:
- Mark Arnold, Database / ETL Developer, Business Intelligence, Office of Information Technology
- Durendal van Huynh, Programmer/Analyst, Business Intelligence, Office of Information Technology
- Ray Vadnais, Senior User Experience Architect, Office of Information Technology
- Briandy Walden, Associate Director, Office of Information Technology
- Campus data science analysts from various partner units
COMPASS Status: No issues reported
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Have a question or suggestion?
The COMPASS team is available to answer any questions and listen to any ideas to make help improve our tools and reports!
