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13 August 2018 Photo Anja Aucamp
Data analytics as key to student success
Knowing who our students are and what their needs are is crucial information that forms the foundation of how institutions could help students succeed to cross the hurdles of student life.
Knowing how to help students succeed through higher education is one of the most pressing challenges currently confronting the system. Despite a significant change in the student population over the past few decades, we are only now beginning to understand who our students are and what their needs are. This crucial information forms the foundation of how institutions could help students succeed. Through two national-level projects funded by the Kresge Foundation, the University of the Free State (UFS) is contributing to the understanding of students and the development of data analytics. 

Siyaphumelela
  
The first project’s goal is to improve the institutional capacity of five higher education institutions to develop institutional research, with a specific focus on data analytics. The UFS was selected to be part of the Siyaphumelela Programme (meaning ‘we succeed’ in isiXhosa) that is sponsored by the Kresge Foundation, and supported by the NGO, the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide). The project has enabled the UFS to strengthen capacity, collaboration, and to promote a culture of evidence. 

The project has also enabled the UFS to move from data reporting to a more analytical approach. This approach has enabled it to assess the impact of larger student success efforts and continuously improve the quality of these efforts. A focus on data analytics has helped the institution to reflect on its infrastructure and data management procedures. The development of dashboards has also allowed information to be shared with faculties. The UFS therefore sees a data analytical focus as critical to improving its effectiveness and efficiency.

The UFS is also playing a leading role nationally to develop academic advising that helps students align their studies, career, and life goals. Academic advising at the UFS includes the first-year experience module UFS101, online advising portals, and individual consulting sessions for students which focus on curriculum planning and success coaching. We have also proved a significant relationship between academic advice, student engagement and success.(Read Creating pathways for student success and Understanding students: A key to systemic success).


Student engagement

The second national project is focused on student engagement and has been run by the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the UFS for 10 years. To date, 20 universities have participated in at least one survey and the project also plays an important role in supporting the Siyaphumelela project goals. 

Engagement data has helped us to better align teaching and learning, and design environments that put student success and quality at the centre of institutional thinking. 

The culmination of findings from student engagement data in 2017 led to the publication of the book: Engaging students: Using evidence to promote student success, edited by Prof Francois Strydom, George Kuh, and Dr Sonja Loots, with contributions from various international and national experts in the higher education environment. This is the first comprehensive publication contextualising student engagement findings in the South African context for the benefit of advancing student success.

Both these projects are contributing to significant developments in the field of higher education and arguably more importantly, to help students succeed.  

News Archive

UFS awards honorary doctorate to global peace ambassador Dr Lakhdar Brahimi
2015-07-07

Professor Heidi Hudson, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies at the UFS and Dr Lakhdar Brahimi.
Photo: Mike Rose from Mike Rose Photography

The Faculty of the Humanities and Centre for Africa Studies rewarded the contributions of Dr Lakhdar Brahimi, a prominent global peace leader, with an honorary doctorate on Thursday 2 July 2015.

The conferment formed one of the highlights of the 2015 Winter Graduations. Dr Brahimi’s work as a United Nations’ (UN) envoy, and African peace leader of note, was deeply respected by the university. Professor Heidi Hudson, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies at the UFS, accepted the PhD on his behalf.

In his acceptance speech, read by Prof Hudson at the Chancellor’s Dinner the same evening, Dr Brahimi expressed his gratitude to the university. “I deeply appreciate your generous recognition, and even now, in the twilight years of my life, I shall try to be worthy of your confidence in everything I say or do.”

“My generation did its share: its successes and its failures are things of the past. We must accept to be judged by you, the graduates. You, the young graduates here at the University of the Free State, and your fellow members of the African intellectual elite, have an exciting opportunity to take on the challenges and fulfil the dreams you have. We must accept to be judged by you.”

Algerian-born Dr Brahimi was first involved with the UN in 1992 as rapporteur to the Earth Summit. Distinctively, he is the most-frequently appointed special envoy of the UN. Amongst many other countries, he has worked as a mediator for South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Burundi, Angola, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, and Côte d’Ivoire on behalf of the UN.

Significant peacekeeping efforts in South Africa (1993- 1994)

The ambassador– in his capacity as special representative to South Africa from December 1993 to June 1994 –played a direct role in South Africa’s democratic transition.

Prof Hudson expressed appreciation for the ambassador’s role in facilitating a peaceful transition from South Africa’s Nationalist government into the current democratic dispensation.

“One of the reasons we selected him as recipient of the honorary doctorate, is because of what he did for the African continent,” she said.

In addition, she commented Dr Brahimi for being a living testament of Ubuntu. “He has displayed an ethic of humanism in everything that he has done, in the way that he has mediated in certain conflicts - his main contribution is as a mediator.

According to Hudson, his humility, modesty, and generosity are the epitome of Ubuntu which states that “I am because we are.”

Dr Brahimi as a global peace practitioner

Dr Brahimi served as Undersecretary-General of the Arab League, Arab League Special Envoy for Lebanon, and Foreign Minister of Algeria.

The UN Peace-building Commission was established as a result of recommendations in his2000 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi Report).

Since 2007, Dr Brahimi has been a member in The Elders - an alliance chaired by Kofi Annan -of peace and human rights advocates including Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson, and Jimmy Carter. His passion for justice led to his membership in the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

In 2010, he was Laureate of the Special Jury Prize for Conflict Prevention, awarded by the Chirac Foundation (France), which promotes international peace and security.

Dr Brahimi’s influence in Peace Education

The Brahimi Report has had an indelible impact on scholars specialising in the broad field of peace operations. Dr Brahimi’s writings have also contributed to knowledge on post-conflict reconstruction and development (PCRD), a signification part of the African Union’s narrative.

He is a distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. He has taught a postgraduate course on Conflict Resolution at Sciences Po, Paris (2011); is Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University; and is affiliated to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he was a visiting professor from 2006 to 2008.

In addition, Dr Brahimi is a founding member of the French-language Journal of Palestine Studies, and a board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.


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