(analysis of administrative data, census or panel surveys, feedback questionnaires and focus groups, etc.). It should be ‘fit for purpose’, and collect only essential data in order to avoid ‘survey fatigue’ among students.
2. Ensure that the tracking approach covers the entire student lifecycle, to include prospective students, active students and graduates, and that it also takes account of their backgrounds and specific needs; full-time, part-time, lifelong, mobile and international learners are mentioned here as examples of an increasingly varied student community.
3. Ensure that tracking supports the overall governance and management of the institution, and its strategic goals. It should also consider the needs and interests of centralised services, faculties and departments.
4. Assess how tracking can contribute to establishing institution-wide key performance indicators. These would typically include application rates, enrolment, retention and throughput rates, dropout, and graduation rates.
5. Consider how the tracking measures correspond to external drivers such as the demand for accountability and transparency, and to requirements for external QA and the allocation of funding.
6. Make use of already existing external approaches to tracking, rather than creating others that compete with or duplicate them. Where possible, engage together with other institutions for the improvement of external approaches.
7. Ensure the active participation and engagement of different sectors of the institution, including its academic and administrative staff, students and leadership. This is essential for the implementation of approaches to tracking, and for circulating the results and following up on them.
8. Take account of the institutional capacities and means, particularly as regards research and data management, in the development and implementation of measures, but also the analysis and presentation of results. The results of tracking do not usually indicate immediately how to act. A rigorous analysis of results should include contextual information from other sources and complementary measures, and also the validation of results, for example by discussing them in focus groups with staff and students. This should also consider lessons learned of other institutions.
9. Communicate and use the results for a variety of purposes, such as enhancing study programmes and student services, generating dialogue on strategic development between different institutional sectors and between leadership and faculties, for intra- or interinstitutional benchmarking, and in information material for students and other external stakeholders. Tracking only makes sense when the results are known and followed up on.
10. Ensure that tracking is anchored in quality assurance.
4.3 Guidelines for the development of institutional
approaches to tracking
The following guidelines are intended to help institutions to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to tracking:
56 47 An overview of the results of the report is presented in the Executive summary.
This study has presented the current trends across Europe regarding tracking by mapping out national and institutional practices and approaches47. Alongside the many benefits of tracking, the study has also pointed to some of the shortcomings of current approaches such as insufficient or hasty understanding and implementation of results, their limited ability to include non-traditional and international students, or issues of data protection, all of which would require follow-up. At the same time there are also areas of potential cooperation at national and European level that would merit further elaboration such as the questions of how tracking results can be used for data collection at European level, and whether collaborative models between universities and other partners could be developed.
The following section presents a non-exhaustive list of issues that emerged from the research carried out in the course of the project. Some of these issues should be followed up on by EUA with its members and partners. Others require action from governments and national bodies, and generally would merit further investigation and discussion, at institutional, national and European level:
1. A European level discussion on tracking
With regard to the further development of the EHEA, and the European discussion on higher education learning and teaching, it would be essential to establish a shared understanding of tracking. While a comprehensive definition such as the one that has been proposed in this project for research purposes, may not be necessary, it would be helpful to consider a generic term that would cover all systematic approaches put in place by higher education systems and institutions to track students and graduates. This would also make sense from the perspective of the EU’s Modernisation Agenda, and in the context of the Bologna Process, both of which advocate more and better data collection and more transparency. However any such definition should also be useful for institutions as well as for QA agencies and other stakeholders when discussing tracking or related issues.
2. Exchange of good practice
Promoting exchange of good practice between institutions as well as between national bodies and data collectors would help to improve tracking approaches but also to encourage – where appropriate and feasible – collaboration and convergence. Such collaboration could also be useful in facilitating joint national or European agreements on data collection parameters and indicators, which are under development both in the framework of EU data collection and the Bologna Process.
3. Boost the inclusiveness and international outlook of European higher
education
One of the key challenges for both, higher education systems and institutions, is to ensure that tracking systems keep pace with the growing diversity of the student body and the development of flexible learning paths. Tracking offers an opportunity to enhance and demonstrate the preparedness of European higher education with regard to broadening and widening participation, and to boosting mobility and internationalisation. This is crucial given the importance attached at European level both to promoting flexible learning and increasing mobility, and given that non-traditional students are no longer a minority.
Conclusions: prospects and outlook
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