Leading With A New Initiative
This past year, EdSights has launched a new initiative that goes beyond the collaborations with our campus partners to solve the college completion crisis. We know the needs of our students are changing, and this initiative seeks to shed a deeper light on students' college experience to provide institutions with a greater understanding of the ways they can provide support to their students.
The “EdSights Student Data Review” will give the industry a clear picture in real-time of what students truly want and need.
Launching Insights: The Webinar
On January 23, 100+ educators joined Will Miller (AVP, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) and Carolina Recchi (Co-CEO, EdSights) to look at the insights derived from conversations with over 300,000 students across 108 partner institutions. Analyzing around 1 million text messages, the study included a wide variety of institutions, from two-year community colleges to four-year public and private institutions, differing in size, student demographics, and residential status.
Unpacking Student Experiences: Key Insights
Taking a closer look at the data, EdSights' AI-driven, SMS-based check-ins have generated valuable insights into the student experience centered around four key factors identified by our persistence framework:
Academic Engagement
Financial Distress
Wellness
Engagement
Notable findings across these factors include:
More students were found to be enjoying their courses this Fall compared to Fall 2022
Across sectors, roughly half of all students felt financial stress, with private institutions’ primary stressor being tuition payments, and public institutions’ main concern being balancing work and school
Only one-third of students reported “good wellness,” with 20% reporting “poor wellness,” indicating no significant change since last fall
Morale going into the past Fall term has improved compared to Fall 2022, with the lowest morale at 4-year public institutions and the highest at 4-year private institutions
These insights underscore the importance of early detection and intervention in student support strategies.
The Road Ahead
Our next Student Data Review will be released in March looking at early data from 2024 student responses.
For access to the webinar or those interested in receiving these reports and joining future Student Data Webinars, please reach out to marketing@edsights.io.
Additionally, if you have any interest in learning more about EdSights and how we engage students, please email nick@edsights.io.