Learn about reporting outcomes and get a general overview of the outcomes dashboard.
Transcript
In this tutorial, we will explore the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership Outcomes Institution-Level dashboard.
The Outcomes Institution-Level dashboard reports the completion rates and other student outcomes by the cohort year in which they first enrolled. Outcomes include students who earned either a bachelor’s degree, associate degree, or certificate or those who are still enrolled in college.
The Outcomes dashboard has a unique filter called “Outcomes by Timeframe”. Here, you can select the timeframe in which to view student outcomes. The options are 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 6 years, or 8 years after the student cohort enrolled at our institution. Each interval includes outcomes that occurred during prior years as well.
The Outcomes dashboard reports seven different outcomes:
Students who completed either a bachelor’s degree, associate degree, or certificate or are still enrolled at your institution during the selected timeframe.
Students who first enrolled at your institution but completed either a bachelor’s degree, associate degree, or certificate at a different institution or are still enrolled at a different institution during the selected timeframe
And students who left college without completing either a degree or certificate.
Now, let’s look at the dashboard charts.
Before we continue, please remember that the results and trends shown in this tutorial cannot be applied to your institution. This data is only for demonstration purposes. Please review your institution’s data before drawing conclusions.
This is the Home Page for the Postsecondary Data Partnership dashboards. The Outcomes Institution-Level dashboard is one of the Outcomes-Over-Time metrics. Clicking that icon takes us to the dashboard.
At the top of the dashboard are the global filters. These include metrics like Attendance, Age Group, and GPA Range. Applying one or more filters allows us to focus on a specific student population, like high-achieving older students who attend college part-time.
Below the global filters, we find the framing questions for this dashboard. Here, we learn that this dashboard measures the proportion of students who have earned credentials and the types of credentials they have earned. In addition, this dashboard shows whether the credentials that the students earned were at your institution or different institutions.
Also, we find the “Outcomes by Timeframe” unique filter that we discussed earlier.
In the upper right is a line chart. Since our “Outcomes Timeframe” filter is set at two years, this line chart shows the completion rates of our student cohort two years after they enrolled at the institution. If we hover over the 2017-18 cohort, we find that 8.1% of students in that cohort have completed credentials.
If we change the Outcomes Timeframe to four years, we notice two things:
First, the most recent year showing is 2015-16, which was four years ago.
Second, the completion rate is 27.6%, which is much higher than the two-year timeframe. This is expected because these students have had four years to complete credentials.
Now, let’s change the Outcomes Timeframe to six years. The 2013-14 data point shows the completion rate of students who entered the institution six years ago. Hovering over that data point, we see that 36.6% of that cohort has completed a credential.
Let’s reset the Outcomes Timeline to two years and look at the lower left chart. This chart is a “part-to-whole map,” where the size of each part represents the size of a student subpopulation. This chart reports the outcomes of students within the selected timeframe.
There are three colors used in this chart. This helps us identify the institutions where the students earned their credentials.
- The red segment represents the students who left college without earning either a degree or certificate.
- The blue segments represent the students who are still enrolled at your institution or earned either a degree or certificate from your institution.
- And the orange segments represent the students who transferred to another institution and are either still enrolled or have earned either a degree or certificate.
Now, let’s explore the two blue segments in this chart. We find that, after two years in college:
- 51.3% of the 2017-18 student cohort is still enrolled at your institution.
- And 7.1% of that cohort completed either an Associate degree or certificate at your institution
The red segment on this chart shows that 30.2% of the 2017-18 cohort left college without completing a degree or certificate.
There are four orange segments on this chart that show the outcomes for students who transferred out. We find that:
- 5.8% of this cohort are now enrolled at other 4-year institutions
- 4.6% of this cohort are now enrolled at other 2-year institutions
- 0.5% of this cohort earned associate degrees at other institutions
- And 0.5% of this cohort earned bachelor’s degrees at other institutions
There are radio buttons to the left of the chart that allow you to change the cohort. Let’s select the 2014-15 cohort. So, these are the two-year outcomes of the cohort that started in 2014-15. We see that 56% of that cohort was still enrolled at your institution after two years – that’s a slightly higher percentage than we saw for the 2017-18 cohort.
If we change the Outcomes Timeframe to 4 years, what happens to our chart? We see that:
- 44.4% of the 2014-15 cohort left college without earning a degree or certificate
- 20.5% of the cohort earned associate degrees and 15.3% were still enrolled at our institution in the 4-year timeline
We also see that a fairly large portion of our 2014-15 cohort transferred out during those four years. Four years after they entered college, we find that:
• 8.6% are enrolled at other 4-year institutions,
• 4.7% earned Bachelor’s degrees,
• 4.1% are enrolled at other 2-year institutions,
• And 2.3% earned Associate degrees at other institutions.
Let’s set the Outcomes Timeframe back to two years and the cohort back to 2017-18.
The final chart in the lower right shows student outcomes for each cohort year. This overall view of the dataset is not affected if we add a dimension but is affected if we add a filter.
We have the Outcomes Timeframe filter set at two years.
Focusing in on the 2011-12 cohort year, we see that there are three bars – one single bar and two stacked bars.
The yellow bar labelled N for “not enrolled” shows that after two years, 26% of the 2011-12 student cohort left college without earning any credentials.
The stacked bar chart labelled C for “cohort” represents students who either completed credentials at our institution or were still enrolled at our institution after two years. Hovering over each section of the stacked bar, we see that 64% of the 2011-12 cohort were still enrolled at our institution after two years and 4% had earned either an associate degree or certificate.
The stacked bar chart labelled O for “other” represents the 2011-12 student cohort who started at our institution, then transferred to other institutions. Hovering over the sections of this bar, we find that 4% of our 2011-12 cohort were enrolled at other 4-year institutions after two years, 3% were enrolled at other 2-year institutions, and none had earned associate degrees at other institutions.
Now, let’s change the Outcomes Timeframe to 6 years and see what happens to our 2011-12 student cohort.
The first bar shows that 6-years after enrolling at our institution, 49% of the cohort had left college without earning a degree or certificate.
The second bar shows that 6% of the cohort were still enrolled at our institution and 19% had completed an Associate degree or certificate at our institution.
The third bar shows that 6% of the cohort were enrolled at other 4-year institutions, 4% were enrolled at other 2-year institutions, 13% had completed Bachelor’s degrees at other institutions, and 3% had completed Associate degrees at other institutions.
In summary, we explored the definitions, unique filters and dimensions, and basic functionality of the Outcomes Institution-Level dashboard.
This dashboard contains a wealth of information about student outcomes over various timeframes regardless of whether a student remained enrolled at our institution or transferred to another institution.
It helps institutions understand which student populations did not complete their credentials.
Thank you for joining us.