Academic Affairs and Policy

Academic Affairs Division

METRICS Dashboard

The Academic Affairs METRICS dashboard is a tool to support sensemaking within our communities. It gives a broad overview on some of the most important components of student success while enabling that view to be specific down to the program or course level, where the on-ground action takes place. The dashboard covers information about student major changes, enrollment, course grade outcomes, student persistence, how many credit hours students attempt each semester, completion rates, and institutional strategies. 

Access to the dashboard is provided to individual users with permission from their institution. If you do not have access, please contact your Provost or their designee. The Provost or designee can then provide the email addresses of any users they wish to have access to: michael.rothlisberger@usg.edu

The dashboard is split into seven areas, each capturing a different component of student and institutional success.

Major Changes

Major Changes provides some analyses about student major changes at your institution. Here, you can find information about which programs students are changing major from and to. You can also review students’ GPA when they change as well as how many credit hours they accumulate before changing their major. 

Example Questions

  • When students leave my program for another, where are they going? What might that be telling me?
  • When students come into my major from another, where did they come from? What might that tell me?
  • If students’ GPA tends to be lower than average when they leave my major, what might that mean?

Enrollment

Enrollment provides you with a snapshot of enrollment in programs, departments, and colleges. Here you can review changes over time, glean information about gender, age, and race/ethnicity, as well as break down students by level (freshman, sophomore, etc.) and full-time status. 

Example Questions

  • Is my department's enrollment shrinking or growing over time?
  • How is the proportion of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors in my program shifting over time? How might this pipeline affect the program in the future?
  • What are the largest programs in my college?
  • Is the proportion of adult learners changing at my institution?

Teaching

Teaching summarizes grade outcomes in courses. Here, you can review those courses that have high failure rates, or review pass rates in the largest courses, and see how that may be changing. The page also provides insight into the extent to which sections within a course differ from one another in grade outcome. Further, you can review how students enrolled in specific programs or colleges are performing in courses.

Example Questions

  • In what courses are students recognizing the least success?
  • How do students in my program perform in certain classes? How does that compare with students in other programs?
  • How different are the outcomes for students in the same course, but different sections?

Returning

Returning tells you the extent to which students return to the institution the following year. Of all the students enrolled in one semester, what percentage of them enrolled at the institution one year later? You can also use this page to see return rates between semesters reviewing potential losses over summer or between fall and spring.

Example Questions

  • Are juniors in my program enrolling in classes a year later to a greater or lesser extent than in the past? What might this tell me?
  • Has the institution improved or worsened in the number of students that were enrolled in the spring, but didn’t enroll the following fall?
  • Are return rates in my college similar to those in other colleges?

Intensity

Intensity shows you how many credit hours students are attempting each semester as well as the proportion of students that are full-time and those that are enrolled in at least 15 hours. 

Example Questions

  • Are students in my program enrolling in enough credit hours to graduate on time?
  • How many hours are freshmen in my college enrolling in compared to freshmen in other colleges?
  • Has the average load of my students been increasing over time?

Completion

Completion tells you to what extent students are successfully graduating by program as well as graduation totals each year. This page includes a novel measure that approximates a degree completion score based on the students that spend time in a program. It counts the number of successful graduates of a program out of the proportion of time students majored in that program.

Example Questions

  • How does my program’s degree completion score compare to similar programs?
  • Has the degree completion score been improving or worsening over time?

Strategies

Strategies provides insight into the most important goals and their associated activities for each institution. Each institution will self-identify their goals and briefly describe their intervention plans. This page keeps visibility on the most important activities as well as providing updates on progress.

Example Questions

  • What are the important activities in my institution?
  • How are we progressing toward our goals?
  • How are the activities going?