Brockenhurst College Taps IBM Technology To Personalize Its Education
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Brockenhurst College in the United Kingdom is hoping to achieve a 15 percent increase in growth and a 15 percent reduction in students who are at risk of dropping out over the next five years. To get there, the institution is rolling out IBM's Exceptional Student Experience (ESE), which uses a mixture of cloud, analytics, mobile and social technologies to help personalize the experience a student gets from enrollment all the way through to entering the workforce and lifelong learning.
With the ESE technology, students can learn anytime, anywhere and on any device, connect with others across the world, and access a rich set of data and online resources at their fingertips. Analytics notify teachers and lecturers when students are at risk of not completing their course or working to their full potential — drawing, for instance, on information about what books students are checking out of the library or which extracurricular activities they are involved in. The technology can also assess various learning styles, such as whether a student favors online learning, face to face learning or a combination of both — giving teaching staff the tools to step in and provide extra support whenever and wherever students need it.
Brockenhurst's ESE implementation is part of a cloud-first strategy aimed at increasing the college's agility — enabling educators and administrators to offer new services to students at key times, such as revision study, examinations, results day, clearing or open days, at a much faster rate. The school will access ESE via IBM's SoftLayer cloud platform, enabling access to predictive analytics, curriculum delivery, social collaboration and more through a personalized portal. ESE will also help administrators monitor students' academic progress by creating a holistic overview for each student's personalized learning experience.
In addition, once students finish their studies and begin their job search, ESE can inform them about openings that match their skill sets, as well as connect them with past alumni for career networking.
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Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].