Illume®
The core purpose of the Illume app is to turn the lights on for administrative staff and decision-makers at a particular institution. Users are able to analyze key institutional metrics, starting with persistence (a student’s likelihood to remain enrolled at the school) and identifying key institutional insights that could be used for policy and decision-making. A few examples of what that means in terms of actual learnings follow below.Learning Moment #1: Persistence and GPA Tipping Points
Background One of our Pioneer Partner institutions was working with external consultants and national research metrics to determine which group of their students were at risk of not persisting and were in need of advising interventions. Based on that general research, the college was advised that students with a GPA of 2.2 or below were typically those that need help. They then targeted this particular group of students with a robust intervention program which had an overall increase in persistence that was less than expected. Insight Once this college utilized our platform and deployed the Illume application, they discovered that for their college, the GPA tipping point (where the likelihood of persistence starts to switch to being more likely to persist from being less likely) was not at 2.2 as the general research and external consultants indicated, but was in fact at 2.6. Their program was essentially missing a critical group of students (comprising 25 percent of the students at-risk) who were more likely to succeed with the right nudge. Action This insight led to the college expanding and testing interventions to include outreach to students within the specific at-risk GPA range for their college.
Learning Moment #2: Enrollment Persistence and Scholarships
Background This Pioneer Partner institution had an enrollment target of 10,000 students following a four-year decline in student enrollment. In order to draw more students, they had been awarding attractive scholarships for first-year students, based on each student’s ACT scores – a fairly common practice among institutions. Insight Once our partner implemented our platform and deployed the Illume application, they discovered that a number of students given priority for admissions and scholarships based upon their ACT scores were transferring out to other institutions prior to earning credentials — using this institution as a stepping stone. More importantly, Illume insights uncovered that at this institution, high school class percentile was a better indicator of persistence for students than ACT scores. Action Today, the institution is re-evaluating their admissions and financial aid policy to make changes in the way they evaluate student applications and allocate valuable scholarship dollars in order to hit their target enrollment rates.
The above two representations of the same data show that High School Percentile is a better indicator of student persistence when compared to ACT Score at this institution. Moreover, data show that leveraging a combination of both predictive features is an even better indicator of student success. The heat map on the right further shows the highest concentration of persisting students in this quadrant.