 I'm going to hand over to Prof Skeeter to talk to us about the speed and behind the data. Over to you, Prof. And before Prof starts, because Prof is going to give us just a keynote. It's not a keynote address, but he's just going to give us a little bit of information and thought-provoking thought as well as Mr. Popes has also did the same. With Prof Skeeter, because we have enough time, he will allow questions and answers at the end of the session. So I welcome you to use the chat forum or also at the end, when he is done presenting, you can raise your hand to ask your questions or comment either on the introductions done previously or comment on Prof Skeeter's talk for this morning. On that note, Prof, over to you. We are at your... Thank you, Elizabeth. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to be involved in this meeting today. It is an amazing experience for me to be exposed to learner analytics in general, but to colleagues that we could sit around the table today and from all over the world and have some deliberations, share some views. I'm going to share my slides. So just in a moment, please bear with me that I could get my slides set going. Thank you very much, Mr. Popes, for the interesting introduction that we've had today. I think it is very important what he said and you really succeeded in setting the scene for this two-day webinar and seminar or what I would like to call it colloquial discussion. When I was asked to get involved in delivering some notes to you today, I thought that of the work that we do at UWC, my involvement in it and the unit I am in and it is against the background of my training. I'm a trained sociologist and have been involved in academia and in educational research for many years also. But therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is not strange that you would hear from me that there is a student behind the data. So my presentation is based on the information accumulated during the process that I was employed by UWC or still employed in the MapWorks project while I was involved and making your Mark project now a program to assist students in the university in developing a predictive analytical tool for studiousness. And we've got a lot of lessons that we learned from that and that I want to share with you. I want to talk to you today about what is this thing called a student? Can I take you through a journey, how we went back to basics? Exactly like Mr. Pogba said, how we went back to basics and the views that sort of were exposed when we started to share it. Ladies and gentlemen, just a few introductory notes for you. My slides would be fairly complete simply because it is the notion in virtual meetings that I don't literally sit in front of you. I don't look at me. You have my slides to look at. Therefore the slides would be more complete than usual. Let me start with some introductory observations. The idea is that it could be included in your colloquial discussions as we progress through these two days. And it will be sometimes provocative statements I would make simply because we went back to the drawing board. Not reinventing the wheel, trying to discover how the wheel was invented. It seems that all tertiary education institutions and that is basically all of the world. Do some data analytics simply or mainly for marketing to enhance their teaching and learning capacity and ability and to pick up the areas where there are problems, but ultimately to enhance the throughput rate of their students. These three outputs, all of them depend on the input of learner analytics. It plays a crucial role in understanding what we are doing. And very important to take note is that there is no one best practice. You cannot go from one university to the other in this part of the world to the other part of the world and say, yes, we have a best practice. No, there's only room for improved practices. And I think we must take note of this statement that this is why we are here. This is why we are here to raise the bar of our respective institutions where we are involved in. To take from what other people say, to tailor make it for our institutions, there is no one single best practice. And also one to one to make note of from some of my observations is the UWC is doing phenomenal. We are, I do believe from my experience at the cutting edge of this phenomenon of learner analytic data, collecting learner data, having access to learner academic data, and so forth. The Super Malala Network Partnership and the faculties, all of them play into this. And it is amazing work that we do. You will hear from my colleagues that we share what we do, take from it what you can and we want to take from yours what you do in your institutions and take from that what is applicable to our environment. So ladies and gentlemen, all researchers and scientists as researchers and scientists, we are purely aware of the fact that the more we know, the more we become aware of what we don't know. This is why we are here today in this room. When we go back to basics, we're talking about this thing called a student. What is this thing called a student in a university environment? Worldwide, all university campuses show both commonalities and unique differences. And the challenge for us is to dissect both of these concepts and make it applicable to our environments. Commonalities are usually academically related. It is often not necessarily non-negotiable academic criteria. That is the curriculum. That is the standard that we set across the world for academia to have qualifications that could be respected and accepted and recognized across institutions. The differences what we talk about of all educational campuses is usually students related, mainly related to unique environmental where they are situated, which part of the world they are situated. Physical, there's physical availability of facilities, buildings, et cetera. And the cultural and psychosocial factors that could have a positive or a negative impact on our knowledge transfer. In combination, these factors, these four factors make a university campus, make a tertiary educational institution. And then all three of it is a human behind it. In all three of these factors, you will see this history. History reflected in buildings. And the UWC is not unique in the sense in South Africa. All campuses in South Africa are reflections of the history of South Africa, good and bad, positive and negative. And we will have to take from that what is good and what is positive to take us forward into the future. After all, all of these unique elements would have an impact on our throughput rate. But what is this thing called a student? You know, a student get access to any university once he's got a senior certificate with a certain level of performance at school. Nice to hear. And nice to say that it's not so easy that when I apply for a university access in another country, I would have to, it's not necessarily recognized. I would probably have to pass an exam to get access to make sure that I'm on standard. In South Africa, this is the case. At UWC, we offer approximately 2010 models I was informed. Educational subject modules is offered to students. The reality is, the student that entered the gates of our university have had exposure to a maximum of probably five to seven subjects of the you want to add modules that relate to their school education. Of probably one or two or even none might have had a bearing on their first year subjects. When I studied psychology at the university in South Africa, I haven't had that subject at school at all. If I study social work, I haven't had that subject at all. So what is the reality? The reality is that students that enter the gates of our universities all over the world. We're not prepared by the secondary educational environment for university training, for tertiary training. They would be prepared for the job market. They would be prepared to be solid citizens and to earn a living. That is the primary purpose. It happens to be so that we add some qualification to say, yes, if you have this extra performance that I have this extra performance at school, we will allow you into tertiary education. But theoretically, all students that managed to have access to tertiary education according to rules or regulations in a country basically start afresh. That is the reality. They all start from the same page. This thing called the student that we have on our campus comes from a spectrum of backgrounds. It's a spectrum of cultural, family and educational contexts that enter our gates. In South Africa, there's no standardized element. Other than that, I mentioned school academic performance and financial resources that access the filter to get access to the university. Some universities abroad, in the first world countries, sometimes, you will find that the financial resources would be covered by the government or by the states. In South Africa, you have to access financial resources, whether it's NSFES or personal funding or whatever it may be. So, ladies and gentlemen, these two factors are actually the only providers built into our access to universities. Not even your criminal record will deter you from entering our gates at university. It is clear from this that students need a mirror to fathom our personal preparedness. Because of this diverse backgrounds that we come from, diverse histories that we come from, and diverse historical institutions, gates that we enter. So it seems to us here in the group that I was doing a research with is that there is a Center for Student Support Services in the Office for Academic Support. It seems that first-year students, in particular, sometimes it carries over to the Secretary and Secretary, that they don't know what they don't know. And this is a very important element in this new, unique edu, and I would like to call it edu social environment. It's an academic psychosocial blend that they enter and will be going to live in for some time. The reality check on throughput rate. It is such an important element. And it's the course of hours of debate of creating definitions of what it is. But in the end, ladies and gentlemen, throughput rate in South Africa is directly related to the funding formula. If you have a poor throughput rate, your funding from the government is less. It seems to me that we focus our, to enhance our throughput rate, the focus is usually mainly on first-year students. To prepare, we have programmed some projects to get first-year students on the page to prepare them to say, this is what you are answerable, but the point is, throughput rate is often not caused by first-year students' inability to pass. It carries through to the second and third-year students also. It's a delayed graduation. If I miss one subject, a core subject that would delay my graduation in my second or third or final year, I'm in trouble. I'm a throughput rate negative impetus, negative element in our statistics. So clearly, ladies and gentlemen, learner analytics is key to identify areas for intervention to where this preparedness or, may I call it re-socialization of students for this university environment can be improved. We have to press the right buttons if we want to be successful. Just some comments for our colloquial discussions during these two days of sharing bills. It's interesting that the dominant forms of assessment at universities would always be test assignments, exams. That is what we in academia use. If you have enough marks, your marks is high enough, you pass. If not, you fail. And that's it. But it does not provide this holistic picture of all the factors that contribute to the successful student and that contribute to those students that were not successful. What made the contributions to those students that were not successful? We need to know more. What do I say? We need to sharpen the tools, ladies and gentlemen. We as learner analysts have to sharpen our tools to read the student better. The majority of the students, probably 80%, according to some information, you will see just now, just struggle to get through the year and pass. They don't seek for attention, special attention, special assistance, special help. They just pass. They cruise through the university, me, a case in point. I just struggled to pass. I struggled to manage my time. I struggled to do enough just to pass. And where I failed, I just had to recap as a war. I have to go back. And that's it. What does it say? The majority of the students are the neglected, missing middle. The majority of our students are probably underperforming. Yes, throughput rate would be determined also by a focus on the struggleers, the students that don't cope, the students have problems. We have to pay attention to that. Paying attention only to that segment is not going to make a difference, a serious difference in the throughput rate. And this is because all our campuses show different physical and cultural and historical environment as mentioned. And some of these elements could have a direct or indirect student academic performance impact on it. And we have to sharpen the tools to look into this amorphic code of information that we have access to so that we could make sense of it. It seems to be that we have a broad consensus amongst psychologists, educations of what a student really needs to do, to be academically successful. The Center for Student Services staff and the actions with them, it became clear, and it is obvious not for us, I mean, it's true for Morricade, it's true for Oslo, it's true for all over the world, that some struggles students experience could have been avoided if they had the early warning signs of where they're heading towards. Because we don't know what we don't know. So if the C-triple-S group at the UWC, we embark on a paradigm shift. I'm so privileged to be associated with that. And that paradigm shift sort of moved from a deficit interventionist approach to a more proactive, possibility-focused approach. And that includes the students once in partnership with the university administration. And this is two important elements that give some meaning to our data analytics data. So what is it that I experienced? First of all, knowing too much and having too detailed information from our learner analytics is just as unmanageable as knowing the too-scant little information or little information. And that is something that is important to take note of. We could go into detail and give a lot of information. But if we cannot interpret it, it's only data. We have to turn data into information. So yes, knowing too much or knowing too little neither has any practical value for our purposes in servicing our academic environment and the student's success. So yes, in search of this balance is the challenge that we undertook at UWC. And that we would like to share with new people during these two days. It's that journey that took us back to the drawing board. And this is important to take note, because that journey took us back to the figures. We've had access to figures. But it seems that even a person like Albert Einstein had had something to say to us. Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts. During our journey back to basics, there was an individual, actually unknown individual to me, but a photo I discovered that had a profound impact on our thinking. During the advent of the Covid times, there was this picture of this individual somewhere in the middle of Africa. And I thought, Africa's got news for the world. This man deserves our respect. To put on a mask during the early days of the Covid, this was the solution. And you could see it's 100% organic. It's 100% protecting safe. It's a 100% fit. We've had research done on what the fit should be that you don't, that you could see through glasses when you put the mask on, et cetera, et cetera. It's 100% recyclable. But you hear what it is? It is blended, post-modern technology in the real sense of the word. Proud to be associated with this individual. And going back to basics. So allow me to share some observations and also to give you some point, this possible point that's during my research in the Making Your Mark program at UWC. We dissected 28 international predictive analytical instruments to sort of, that can be used as a soundboard, a reflection as a mirror to students so that they could fathom where we are. And I on track. And have I adapted to this new academic environment, university environment. But what was clear when I discovered when I dissected these 28 instruments, the students' voice was absent. You could see it clearly here. It is typical top-down, academically inclined, designed instruments. 35% of the clusters in all of these 28 instruments focus on creative thinking, creative mind. Those things that is theoretically associated with tertiary academic environment. It's about self-motivation and social integration. And then it tapers down to some other stuff. We took from this what we could. But clearly the bulk of these instruments showed to me the voice of the student is missing. So what we did during that time was that when we embarked on this research to test one of these instruments, we added three questions to the evaluation of it. And these three questions was, if you look at successful students in your faculty, what do you think is the one most important and belated as? That is looking at the people around you, my fellow peer students. The second question is, okay, having said this, having seen this, what is it that you need? And then what do you think your faculty should do? These are the results we found. Students saw, recognized what they success, the successful students, they recognize successful students in as being hardworking. They know how to manage their time. They have perseverance. They are determined to complete. They are motivated, which is probably the same thing, both of them could be in the same category. Hardworking and time management could probably also be in the same category. Self-discipline, hardworking, same thing. You see all these personal traits. And then they pop up speaking, communication, ability and discussions, having to share reviews. But we also asked the students, what is it that I need? Now I've said this, I see this, these are, this is the makeup of a successful fellow student. What I need, I need better time management. I need more commitment, hardworking, less procrastination, more focus. That's probably time management. Self-discipline, and so forth. We also asked what the faculty should do for us. The faculty should give us writing skills, speaking, communication skills. The faculty should help us with study methods, learning skills, and so on. And you could see what this critical thinking thing is further down of what was from, came from the international environment. I'm rushing for time. The standard protocol, ladies and gentlemen, of intervention addresses three levels. And there's the primary, the whole class in the secondary, more group work and then you have the individual work. It seems to be that about 80% of the students are dressed in the overall, that's the international figure in the group work environment. You know, the big group work environment. But then we have students that aren't dressed and then we have the individuals. But at UWC, we were able to dissect it further. And I have two or three slides left. I was talking about the machine middle. We were able in our evaluations when we designed the institution alert index. It seems to be that from transfer, that is from 2018, 2019 and the third transition that we did our research on, 8.3%. That means about three out of every 10 students. I've had, sorry, had no problem. And one out of every 10 students would have a problem in this status. The machine middle is probably here. But if you look at this, what happened here is once this group became bigger over time and because of interventions, this group became smaller, but this group also became smaller. So who are the neglected people? We have to work on different elements, ladies and gentlemen. We have to work in improving the ability of the poor student. But we also have to nurture the good student to excellence. And our data should cover the spectrum. And our information with putting the student behind it should cover the spectrum. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I can inform both, we need information that can inform both the faculty, the institution and the whole movement of current status and trends in the students experience. Let us all use this collegial opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, of these two days to share our knowledge, to improve our practices, not in terms of a best practice. We will never get there to improve our practices so that we could serve the student population and we could serve the institutions that have all unique traits. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attention. Wow, Prof. Every time I'm in the room with you, I let new things. The more we know, the more we come to a realization that we don't know. Thank you for your thought-provoking presentation. And you do have a question because I'm looking at the time as well in the chat. I'm gonna get it right this time because she used her name, Lerato. So Lerato has posted a comment and not a comment but actually some questions, some couple of questions. I'm not sure if you are able to see the chat. She says, hi, Prof, very thought-provoking talk. Please elaborate for me on the following. How do you profile your students to know who they are? That's number one. Number two, how do you handle changing profile over the years? And the last one, how do you deal with the minority groups to make sure that their experience is still memorable in a positive way? Thank you for that. I'm very hesitant to say to a student, how do you know who you are? You are who you are. And we should not take that away from anybody. I am who I am. I am who I am. I operate in a different environment. In fact, the university campus environment is according to all criteria of society and abnormal society. It's an abnormal environment. I can prove it to you. The average IQ of the person that enters the gates of the university is higher than the average IQ of the population. The average facility for education is higher than that or any in the population, in the communities. The average training of the presenters of your lecturers is higher than that you've ever experienced. And we have facilities for recreation. Everything is there. It's a different environment. But this is also different. You have nobody that wakes you up in the morning to say you must go to school. And this is where you have to adapt. This is where we have to say, I have to change my tech. I have to change my way I operate in this environment. There's a saying in sociology, we talk about you have to switch containers. You enter the gates of a university campus. You have to switch containers. And we have to give students that ability. Stay who you are at the versatile. You're able to switch containers. I don't think I should go into too much detail because of the time. You're muted there, Elizabeth. There are a couple of comments in the chat. One is saying very informative and practical. This is from Magdalene. And the other one comes from Melikaia. I'm not going to say whether it's he or she, but they wrote, my thesis is on the gamie or gamification of higher education content. Do you have any thought on gamification as a tactic for increased engagement? I do have. It is a total new environment. You are trading new ground. And the spinners of that, we still don't know. You must remember ladies and gentlemen, we have to, when we raise children, we often give children guns to play police and robbers, police and robbers and so forth and so forth. I also played with guns in my life. I have never had the urge to shoot anybody. So it is so important to take note of how far the implications would be. And we've done some research on television just to trigger your thinking a little bit more on television movies. What is the dangerous part of movies? And it seems to be that the dangerous part is the effect of my actions, not my actions. We are inundated with movies that shoot people, but when you see the effect of that, it becomes disastrous. So gaming, it's amazing how vicious these games nowadays is. How vicious the content is of games people play and so forth. But it seems to be, it does not necessarily rubble. We need a lot of more information on that. It could be a logic link. Whether it's proven by data, I don't know. But gaming in general, I'm not talking about, I have a sense of what you are referring to. Education is not only a game. It's creating a mindset of knowledge, something different. You can use gaming as an instrument, I suppose. Go for it. We need more information. Thank you, Prof. Melika, if you have more questions or you need more clarity, you can raise your hand and I will recognize you so you can speak to Prof directly as well. Krofi, you also posted in the chat, you can unmute and ask Prof the same question that you posted on the chat. Thank you. I thank you very much, Elisabeth, and thank you very much, Prof Scatter, for a wonderful presentation. My name is Krofi Marumula and I'm from UNICEF. Prof, I wanted to just ask you a young question with regards to the comments that you made around best practice. And certainly, as somebody who has been practicing in information system, business intelligence, and analytics for the bigger part of my humble career, those comments really resonate. And I remember the days when we used to have a very inferior infrastructure. And it was often funny when we are sitting for this international exams because the men in which they asked these questions and how we would respond, we would respond in the context of how we would have to do it in South Africa with the limitations that we have. And what was always shared as best practice then was really not best practice for us. And even in some cases was not feasible. So I do support the views and the ideas that there is no best practice. However, Prof, my question is that in the context of what you have shared with us, and we are talking about learning analytics in general, there is always a scenario where others are doing better than others. And there's often a learning process which may include a benchmark or an alignment of some sort where we learn from others. Is it really a bad idea to work towards a certain position where that position can be defined as a kind of, when I say minimum requirement, I mean not exactly, but there's a sort of a benchmark of some sort to say in the context of trying to understand what this thing of a student is and how do we assist them. This are the list of measures or indicators and this is what they mean. And if you are able to kind of work out this sort of measures, then this are the kind of insights that you can get. I just wanted to check, Prof, as to what are your views regarding that, especially mapping it back to the comment that you made around best practice. Thank you. Thank you for that question. It is the case that we have been working on an instrument that could assist with that. We call it the student thermometer. It's now in the final phases of our testing. We did manage. I do believe the group, we work in an excellent group in C3S and this group managed to draw down back to basics. You see that guy with the mask? We went back to real basics. What makes, the question is, what makes a successful student? We draw it down to six criteria, clusters of information, which is what I would like to believe is inter-institutional. There are, for instance, just to give you one, without that I will conclude. We talk about communication skills. You have to have reading, writing, listening, and speaking. If you cannot do that, those four, you have a problem. I don't say to what level, but what I do say, if you don't have the ability to speak in class with colleagues, with students, fellow students, with lecturers to come across and project your views, you've got a problem. And then we have to adjust that. If you cannot write properly what you think on paper, you're not gonna pass. Our previous question was from a doctor or student. If you cannot put your thoughts on paper, they're not gonna pass you. So these are provisors, the very bare basics. We draw down to that. Yes, we are in the process of putting you on the table. Early learner, early, what's it, alert for students, studiousness, the early warning instrument for students, studiousness. And I think we will probably be able to share some good information during our next deliberations of coming up of the SAA of our conferences. But yes, I think we are there. I have six of them, but it's not, I didn't decide not to share that with you at this point. It's still in the final developing phase. Thank you, Prof. Apologist, my phone decided to go on. Are there any final questions? Anyone who would have this burning question that they want to ask, but they were not sure whether to ask it, now is your chance to ask that question. Chuma, the floor is yours. Prof, you only have two minutes to respond to Chuma. Chuma, you only have one minute or two minutes to ask your question, thank you. Okay, thank you, Elizabeth. I'm not sure if I'm audible enough. You are. For everyone to hear. Okay, thanks, Prof. My name is Tumamba, I live from Multasasubu University. Mine is a quick one, Prof. You mentioned something very much interesting about access to higher education institutions and student profile and background. Unfortunately, you correctly specified that the only determinant that guarantees one access is academic performance from high school. There is nothing else that is being determined. I want to check from your understanding or from your wisdom. Do you think we need to get to a point where we enrich those determinants with a student profile? For example, we look to where the students are coming from and the environment from where they were learning. We use that particular information and get to an understanding that it is justified that the amounts will not be similar to those coming from at least backgrounds that are better off. At what stage do we use that particular information to enrich our determinants of giving them access to higher education? I'm not sure if that does. Yes, yes, I have some thought-provoking ideas for you and I'll do it in short. The problem at the current problem is that the average mark of a tertiary education of a secondary education school mark gives me access to university. That means if I am a language guru, gifted person in languages and I fail my maths, I won't get access to university. The same is for the contrary. If I am a gifted mathematician and I fail my language, I don't get access to university. So what do the universities do? We give the average person and above average person. I think we should think of in future, giving access to university courses, study directors, what on earth do you want? If I want to become a language expert, an author, what do I want to do with maths? I don't need it. I'm not going to attend any maths classes. If I want to become a, I'm just thinking aloud now, become a nurse and so forth, then you need some maths. I don't need languages. If I want to become an engineer, I don't need languages. Now, not to that extent, at least. I know what I say we could debate it. But I think we should move in the direction of course-related access, so that we could get the gifted person in that direction and not only the average person, and we have to show the door for that gifted person. Just think about that for future. That means you won't be able to switch courses. I give you access to the language department. And that's it. You can't switch from there to law. All right, you get my idea. I think that is probably where we should go. And I think it will address a lot of our, may I call it low-key performers at universities. We already cut out the excellent guy before he entered university or the gifted person. Okay, thank you. Stanford, unfortunately we have run out of time, but you are more than welcome to put your comment on the chat, and Prof will gladly also probably respond to all the comments that are posted on the chat. We are almost heading towards, let me see if we do have enough of time because we're going to have a break and then we move into the workshops immediately. So I want to allow more time so that you can go and refill your coffees. Okay, so let's get to the announcements and the house rooms going into the workshops. So I would like to firstly, actually also,