This article is a little unclear, and the title arguably exaggerated. They're actually tracking where students swipe their student ID cards. Which, yes, is a form of location tracking. They don't have any idea where students are going off campus.
not necessarily true. Many businesses may provide college discounts and use a PoS type device to verify the validity of the id. (this is how it works here at UAA to some extent)
> They also have an embedded sensor that can be used to track geographic history whenever the card is swiped.
This almost makes it sound like the card keeps a log of where it is used internally. If that is the case then it could be used to track off campus activity, as a lot of colleges let you link your student ID so that it can be used as a debit card (mine did). The article is kinda vague though, so who knows.
If it is the case that it's tracking all purchases, I hope it's optional or at least that students are properly informed because that's kinda creepy.
It's ID cards, so it's going to have a chip or sensor that isn't powered: it'll simply grab current geolocation on swipe. It also wouldn't be usable off campus for anything the school wasn't providing.
Also since it's ID cards: when swiped the machine would be communicating back to a central server to get balance (and thus tracking) OR they're pulling it off of the card's state at the machines directly, then writing to the card where it was used and then pulling all that data when they recharge the cards. 3rd potential option being reading each machine that interacted with the cards and collating but I see that as less likely, given the wording of the article.
Any way you look at it: it's something credit card companies already do.
Pretty damn Orwellian, but it certainly shows how some aspects of university education are broken for many people.
Socially integrating yourself with other successful people in your classes and degree program will dramatically increase your chances of success. This does not come naturally to many people. Ways to improve this include:
* requiring students to live in dorms with students taking the same classes.
* mandatory weekly study sessions for every class
* industry partnerships to get students internships with real world experience during the summer.
IMO these guys[0] are on the right track and I wish programs like that were available to more people.
Sure, I think it should be opt-in. At ANSEP if you opt in you get a full ride plus internships during the summer.
Totally worth it if your main goal in college is to succeed scholastically, rather than party all the time and get distracted by roommates who are taking different classes with different study needs and might be trying to play beer pong and wrestle till 3am the night before your midterm.
I did the dorm thing, was impossible to study there. My point is if you can set people up for success through a program like that, it should at least be an option to people.
What I mean is, you can opt in to the program, which comes with benefits (like internships and scholarships) and with it come additional requirements (like living with classmates and mandatory study sessions).
> Socially integrating yourself with other successful people in your classes and degree program will dramatically increase your chances of success.
I strongly agree with this claim, but I think it's the kind of thing that only works when it comes about naturally, or at least when the motivation to set up this dynamic comes from within. I disagree with your suggestions to bring this about.
> requiring students to live in dorms with students taking the same classes.
I think this could be nice for some people if it were opt-in (especially those who struggle socially), but overall being exposed to people from other disciplines is a feature of college, not a bug. Most of the people in your classes will already be from the same discipline, so it is important to be exposed to people who study other things in your social life, imo.
> mandatory weekly study sessions for every class
I really dislike this. People have wildly varying learning styles and you should not impose a specific format on them. I have issues processing auditory information, and I can learn 2-4x faster just reading the textbook than I can from a verbal discussion or lecture. If you force me to attend these, you are making me spend my time suboptimally. Also, while such a session can be highly productive for a small group of bright, motivated students, the whole thing slows to a crawl when it is inevitably forced to cater to the lowest common denominator.
> industry partnerships to get students internships with real world experience during the summer.
I think this could be a good thing, as long as the company isn't obligated to offer every student an internship. In that case the lowest common denominator issue applies.
> but overall being exposed to people from other disciplines is a feature of college
Strongly agree. I studied at a collegiate university, and most of my enduring friendships are people outside of my course. Further, it contributed to having a broader understanding of the world, and being a CS student but having a meaningful discussion about, say, calcium channels with the medical students or microeconomics with the economists gives a valuable skill of being able to quickly build a working model of something outside of your experience/field.
> People have wildly varying learning styles and you should not impose a specific format on them. I have issues processing auditory information, and I can learn 2-4x faster just reading the textbook than I can from a verbal discussion or lecture.
I think it depends a lot about their exact nature. Personally I found lectures to be of limited value, and general discussions would be all but useless, but focused supervisions with 1-3 students and an academic to be invaluable. Preparing the work ahead of time allows you to learn how you like, but a verbal interrogation regarding it means you must be confident and know it well enough to think on your feet (it's also good viva voce practice). A good supervisor will also dig deeper than any one text typically would (if necessary), and give tailored explanations if something is tripping you up. They'll also push you forward and not let you coast if you covered the minimum mandatory material, and come up with new ways of applying the knowledge or fuse it with material from other classes/years. I think it'd be difficult to replicate that with any form of self-study.
> requiring students to live in dorms with students taking the same classes.
Hmm...my first semester at university (after transferring from community college) my roommate was the only other male sharing my major (out of 9 total IIRC). Makes me wonder if it was a coincidence?
Didn't help any, he did his thing and I did mine. Don't think we ever talked about classes even once. Think he ran off and did a semester (or maybe a year) in New York after that, when he came back one of my friends went out of their way to introduce us to each other since we were the only males in that major.
There's probably a point hidden in there somewhere.
Same here, based on time on campus, time in labs/study areas I am able to predict pretty accurately who will succeed. Of course there are always outliers.
So, retention rates improved by not even 3pp and they take that as proof that the program worked? Isn’t it much more likely that the increase is driven by the bigger attention the retention topic got by the administration as well as the increase in counseling, etc.? And how much damage is done by approaching students and telling them that their recent behavior indicates they might drop out soon?
Hopefully they take a more positive approach. By identifying retention issues advisors/educators can approach the students in trouble and offer support and services. Once they leave it is much harder to get them to return and you can sometimes run into FERPA issues trying to get them to return.
The takeaway is that if you give a load of academics a database, they are like children left unattended with a running chocolate fountain and a sign saying "no fingers".
And actually bragging about it. Surprised to read that this came from a university press release and not a whistleblower, in-depth undercover investigation, embarrassing court case or the like. Apparently we've finally reached the dystopia where surveillance is completely normalized.
This article, and most of the discussion here, appears to be conflating two things.
1. The University of Arizona tries to predict which students are at risk of dropping out using a bunch of data about them, and then offers some extra support to these students. They have been doing this for four years and have improved their retention rate about 3% in the last year.
2. A researcher at the University of Arizona has been experimenting with using location tracking to predict which students will drop out. She has found that using this data allows her to make more accurate predictions than the ones that the university currently uses. She hopes that they will one day start using her data/methods.
> At the end of the day, universities are businesses trying to retain customers.
This matter-of-fact claim -- and the mindset it engenders -- encapsulates perhaps the vast majority of what's gone wrong in higher education in the past two decades or so.
23 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 32.7 ms ] threadThis almost makes it sound like the card keeps a log of where it is used internally. If that is the case then it could be used to track off campus activity, as a lot of colleges let you link your student ID so that it can be used as a debit card (mine did). The article is kinda vague though, so who knows.
If it is the case that it's tracking all purchases, I hope it's optional or at least that students are properly informed because that's kinda creepy.
Also since it's ID cards: when swiped the machine would be communicating back to a central server to get balance (and thus tracking) OR they're pulling it off of the card's state at the machines directly, then writing to the card where it was used and then pulling all that data when they recharge the cards. 3rd potential option being reading each machine that interacted with the cards and collating but I see that as less likely, given the wording of the article.
Any way you look at it: it's something credit card companies already do.
Socially integrating yourself with other successful people in your classes and degree program will dramatically increase your chances of success. This does not come naturally to many people. Ways to improve this include:
* requiring students to live in dorms with students taking the same classes.
* mandatory weekly study sessions for every class
* industry partnerships to get students internships with real world experience during the summer.
IMO these guys[0] are on the right track and I wish programs like that were available to more people.
[0] http://www.ansep.net/
I think that's even more Orwellian. It does sound like just a jail.
Totally worth it if your main goal in college is to succeed scholastically, rather than party all the time and get distracted by roommates who are taking different classes with different study needs and might be trying to play beer pong and wrestle till 3am the night before your midterm.
> Sure, I think it should be opt-in.
So which should it be? You seem to be Co trash ting your self here.
I strongly agree with this claim, but I think it's the kind of thing that only works when it comes about naturally, or at least when the motivation to set up this dynamic comes from within. I disagree with your suggestions to bring this about.
> requiring students to live in dorms with students taking the same classes.
I think this could be nice for some people if it were opt-in (especially those who struggle socially), but overall being exposed to people from other disciplines is a feature of college, not a bug. Most of the people in your classes will already be from the same discipline, so it is important to be exposed to people who study other things in your social life, imo.
> mandatory weekly study sessions for every class
I really dislike this. People have wildly varying learning styles and you should not impose a specific format on them. I have issues processing auditory information, and I can learn 2-4x faster just reading the textbook than I can from a verbal discussion or lecture. If you force me to attend these, you are making me spend my time suboptimally. Also, while such a session can be highly productive for a small group of bright, motivated students, the whole thing slows to a crawl when it is inevitably forced to cater to the lowest common denominator.
> industry partnerships to get students internships with real world experience during the summer.
I think this could be a good thing, as long as the company isn't obligated to offer every student an internship. In that case the lowest common denominator issue applies.
Strongly agree. I studied at a collegiate university, and most of my enduring friendships are people outside of my course. Further, it contributed to having a broader understanding of the world, and being a CS student but having a meaningful discussion about, say, calcium channels with the medical students or microeconomics with the economists gives a valuable skill of being able to quickly build a working model of something outside of your experience/field.
> People have wildly varying learning styles and you should not impose a specific format on them. I have issues processing auditory information, and I can learn 2-4x faster just reading the textbook than I can from a verbal discussion or lecture.
I think it depends a lot about their exact nature. Personally I found lectures to be of limited value, and general discussions would be all but useless, but focused supervisions with 1-3 students and an academic to be invaluable. Preparing the work ahead of time allows you to learn how you like, but a verbal interrogation regarding it means you must be confident and know it well enough to think on your feet (it's also good viva voce practice). A good supervisor will also dig deeper than any one text typically would (if necessary), and give tailored explanations if something is tripping you up. They'll also push you forward and not let you coast if you covered the minimum mandatory material, and come up with new ways of applying the knowledge or fuse it with material from other classes/years. I think it'd be difficult to replicate that with any form of self-study.
Hmm...my first semester at university (after transferring from community college) my roommate was the only other male sharing my major (out of 9 total IIRC). Makes me wonder if it was a coincidence?
Didn't help any, he did his thing and I did mine. Don't think we ever talked about classes even once. Think he ran off and did a semester (or maybe a year) in New York after that, when he came back one of my friends went out of their way to introduce us to each other since we were the only males in that major.
There's probably a point hidden in there somewhere.
Did a test with it using my website: https://easy-a.net
I basically can predict students future semester grades, hours spent and what not.
This matter-of-fact claim -- and the mindset it engenders -- encapsulates perhaps the vast majority of what's gone wrong in higher education in the past two decades or so.