Allow me to play devil's advocate. Much of what I'm discovering in a meta-analysis project of student success research since 1951 is yielding strong suggestions toward quantitative, statistical analysis and technology tools being contraindicated for appropriately predicting student behavior. What I'm thinking is that sometimes we focus more on an issue needing to be solved rather than developing stronger ways to perpetually address them. Perhaps higher education's obsession with quantifying students is causing some to forget that students are people - not raw materials that we can magically shape into a finished product. One way of looking at the "overquantification" of students is as a byproduct of college education commoditization, but In "Why we are looking at the value of college all wrong," St. John's College President Christopher B. Nelson argues that "education and economics are essentially incompatible:" The maturation of the student-not information transfer-is the real purpose of colleges and universities. Of course, information transfer occurs during this process. One cannot become a master of one's own learning without learning something. But information transfer is a corollary of the maturation process, not its primary purpose. This is why assessment procedures that depend too much on quantitative measures of information transfer miss the mark. It is entirely possible for an institution to focus successfully on scoring high in rankings for information transfer while simultaneously failing to promote the maturation process that leads to independent learning. It is, after all, relatively easy to measure the means used in getting an education, to assess the learning of intermediate skills that prepare one for a higher purpose-things like mastering vocabulary and spelling, for instance, which help one to communicate. It is also easy to measure the handy, quantifiable by-products of a college education, like post-graduate earning, either in the short term or long term. But both of these kinds of measures fail to speak to education's proper end-the maturation of the student. (For the rest of the article, which I highly recommend you read: Why we are looking at the ‘value’ of college all wrong - The Washington Post ) Tools like a GPA Predictamicator perpetuate a Culture of Quantification Hype that encourage people to regard metrics and numbers as equipollent to the sociological roots of education research and the human part of a human enterprise like college. Think back to W. E. B. Du Bois' (1903) The Souls of Black Folk: "The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization." Looking at what the researchers are studying in the referenced material is actually pretty disheartening to me - not because of the tools and technology they're using, but because they're trying to come up with new answers to questions that have been answered for over a half of a century. From a more positivistic perspective, can cell phones help us understand a student's lifestyle? Sure! But what actionable intelligence is this information contributing to? I mean, which should we be focusing on: What a student is doing in the next two weeks or why they're waiting two weeks for a counseling appointment? To ice Michael's cake (assuming he's also not confident with the generalizability of this research), the sample does not adequately represent the big picture of college students. What about students who also work full time? Or have children? Or are 100% online? Or have PTSD? Sampling isn't the larger issue with this study, though. When I see things like this come out I feel like they receive a whole lot of attention because we are always looking for the next big tool or piece of software to provide us with answers, when in reality we should be focusing on whether we are asking the right questions. We don't need more tools; we need more relationships. Relationships between the administrators and the faculty, between the students and the institution. Tools don't teach. Software doesn't make a student successful. To quote the last sentence from the previously linked article, "Unless we stop taking the easy way, unless we get past our habit of interpreting everything in economic terms, we will never grasp the true value of a college education."
Much of what I'm discovering in a meta-analysis project of student success research since 1951 is yielding strong suggestions toward quantitative, statistical analysis and technology tools being contraindicated for appropriately predicting student behavior. What I'm thinking is that sometimes we focus more on an issue needing to be solved rather than developing stronger ways to perpetually address them. Perhaps higher education 's obsession with quantifying students is causing some to forget that students are people - not raw materials that we can magically shape into a finished product. One way of looking at the "overquantification" of students is as a byproduct of college education commoditization, but In "Why we are looking at the value of college all wrong," St. John's College President Christopher B. Nelson argues that "education and economics are essentially incompatible:" >> Very well said.
