Análisis microbiológicos

in different types of institutions located in different countries, and a better understanding of the wider impact of tracking on them.

4.2 How can tracking be used for institutional development?

4.2.1 developing an integrated approach to tracking

While, as already explained, some form of tracking occurs in almost every higher education system and institution, only a few of the institutions visited have a holistic approach to tracking which tracks the entire student lifecycle – before, during and after their studies.

In adopting this approach, institutions combine administrative data with the results from different initiatives that track the progression of students and graduates, and the general student experience. These initiatives can include targeted surveys, feedback sheets or course evaluations, face-to-face contact or focus group interviews (see Chapters 2 and 3). Such an approach would also normally encompass a strategy for communicating the results, and a targeted follow-up. Tracking should lead to the enhancement of teaching and learning, and be linked to student services. Relevant results would also be made available to staff and students, prospective students, policy makers and employers.

The importance of creating an integrated and holistic approach to tracking, both within institutions and between them and the national level, was clearly promoted by the universities that had worked on developing their own approach to tracking student careers. The project revealed that there are similarities in the development of a consistent approach to doing so and other transversal issues such as internationalisation, lifelong learning or quality assurance. With reference to the observation of Middlehurst (2009) on internationalisation, three development stages can be distinguished:

• At an adaptation stage, tracking is left up to individual actors on an ad-hoc basis.

• At an organisational stage, initiatives and policies have become coordinated by a unit within the institution, such as an institutional research unit, an evaluation unit or a strategic development unit.

• At the third stage, encompassing strategies are developed and engage a much wider range of staff at different levels within the institution, and tracking initiatives are coordinated so that they complement one another. Thus tracking becomes embedded in the institutional culture.

The site visits found institutions at all three stages, with some moving very quickly through them because of external pressures for accountability and efficiency, or because the leadership had defined clear strategic goals for the use of tracking to evaluate the quality of teaching and learning or the student experience.

4.2.2 Using tracking for evidence-based institutional decision-making

Greater institutional autonomy also means that leadership needs to pay more attention to internal governance and management, and external accountability. The site visit interviews revealed a number of interlinked purposes served by tracking which can enhance internal strategic development and management and promote quality assurance. Tracking results were also important with regard to the allocation of funding by national bodies to institutions. In many institutions tracking was seen to promote better communication and collaboration. In universities with highly independent faculties, tracking has enabled a strategic dialogue on the quality of teaching and learning between institutional leadership and individual faculties. The tracking of student retention and throughput rates, and the results of student surveys are analysed by leadership and feed into systematic follow-up measures. The same information also enables comparison and benchmarking between faculties and departments within the institution, but also with those of other institutions.

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Some examples of the positive impact of such actions in improving relations between different parts of the institution and the overall institutional leadership include better information flow and improved understanding, identification of special needs, mutual learning and the spread of good practice. There is also some indication that the benefits could include movement towards defining a common core or minimum offer of support services for all students within an institution, even though routines and practice at its faculties might vary. Some institutions indicated that they would consider tracking results for the definition of key performance indicators (KPIs), and use them for monitoring retention targets, dropout and graduate employment, and for identifying required actions such as tutoring and mentoring. However, only a few of the institutions visited have started to operate in this way, which should probably not be a surprise as the use of KPIs is far from universal45_. The introduction of an institution-wide approach for the tracking of students and graduates seems to be a starting point for some universities in emphasising the development of a more general evidence-based institutional strategy, and in reviewing their data collection. Data collection in the universities visited was often fragmented, and confined to individual faculties which did not follow up on or circulate their results. Indeed, from the site visits it emerged that scarce resources were often used at faculty level to develop similar but incompatible approaches. This sometimes led to duplications in surveys carried out, while in other cases, groups such as international students or lifelong learning students were for the most part left out.

4.2.3 data-rich systems and institutional research capacity

As highlighted in Chapter 2, a student administration system is at the core of most tracking operations, including surveys, and there is an ongoing trend towards overhauling and upgrading systems so that they manage the lives of students from the time of their application for higher education, to their graduation. Examples of this were evident during site visits in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. However, such practice is certainly more widespread and generally on the rise.

In line with the business and service sectors, some institutions have based their administration system on CRMs46_. Typically this entails the integration of various data collection operations within the institution into a ‘seamless system’, which compiles student data including personal data and study records, etc., from application to graduation, but also recorded information on alumni and staff. They promise to provide highly integrated data administration, with ubiquitous access, targeted communications and versatile applications, such as a 360° view on students, easy generation of data, statistics and information for internal management purposes and transfer to both internal and external stakeholders (authorities and agencies). As in other areas, there are of course privacy and data security issues to be considered.

Another technical innovation is the use of data centres or warehouses at institutions, in which their databases and collections can be uploaded and incorporated into new databases containing both information on individual students and aggregated data for statistics and reports. The advantage of this approach is that it interrelates disparate data sources, rather than building a holistic system for data collection. As a result, the raw data can be preserved and (re-)interrogated at a later stage.

Besides their technical innovation, these measures are likely to have a much broader impact if implemented properly. Universities need professional staff capacities for data administration, and also educational research capacity to assess and reflect on their institutional development, including the enhancement of teaching and learning. In addition, a central message is not that ‘more data’ needs to be gathered. Some institutions surveyed said they eventually realised that they had plenty of data available but that it was probably not used. However, they did mention that it was often hard for the institutional leadership (for example) to access their administrative data quickly and conveniently if this material was collected via different offices or programmes, or at faculties or departments. Thus some institutions stated that their data warehouse was not just integrating the data sets, but contributing to better coordination of the different institutional tracking initiatives.

Data protection is a crucial issue in tracking. Institutions have to take precautions by arranging levels of authorisation for accessing personal student data. In addition, some universities indicated that legal regulations made it difficult to get a consistent overview of student careers. For instance, institutions in Belgium/Flemish

45 _{Only half of more than 200 higher education institutions that took part in the survey stated that they would use KPIs (Loukkola and Zhang,}

2010).

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