More colleges are seeking new ways to help students succeed academically. Under growing pressure to improve graduation rates and show the value of a degree, colleges are experimenting with personalized learning, coaching, data analytics, and other approaches. Meanwhile, a new wave of ed-tech companies is tapping into that market, offering new tools and services aimed at furthering students’ achievements. This special report on innovation in academe looks at some of the efforts to find a formula for student success.
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NewsIn Quest for Success, Colleges Ask: What’s Working?
It’s not enough to start programs to help students meet their goals. Administrators need data. -
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Ed Tech’s Next Wave Rolls Into View
The coming generation of companies will do the important work of remaking higher education in a more personal, meaningful way. -
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Advising Gets Personal With New Coaching Services
Companies that provide academic coaches say such customized support can improve retention. -
The Quest for Student Success
How to Make Students’ Campus Jobs More Meaningful
A University of Iowa program tries to help students find academic value in their work, no matter how menial. -
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The Power of the Personal
At its heart, higher education is a human activity. By face-to-face contact, colleges can do far more to help students learn. -
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Thinking ‘Bigger Than Me’ in the Liberal Arts
Despite the perception that the arts primarily promote individual expression, arts training can create opportunities for something more. -
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Engaging Students Requires a Renewed Focus on Teaching
Why don’t more senior professors emphasize classroom instruction? Some are starting to. -
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Big-Ideas Courses Are Lessons in Humility
They can’t possibly fulfill all the goals that faculty members and students set for them. But that in itself is thrilling and instructive. -
The Quest for Student Success
Rethinking Open Access
Community colleges’ continued commitment to the open door means that too many students, unprepared as they are, encounter a closed doorway. -
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Are We Ready for Robots to Grade?
An experiment with automated scoring of essays in a MOOC yields surprising results and suggestions for how to improve the process.
