U Michigan MIDAS Program Backs Student Success Research

The University of Michigan is self-funding two new research projects that explore student success. One will examine the ties among students' personal attributes, such as values, beliefs, interests, behaviors and backgrounds and their success in school or overall sense of well-being. The other will attempt to build a holistic model of student success through students' written work, behavioral data and institutional data.

Both multi-disciplinary projects will receive$1.25 million in funding from the university's MIDAS program. The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) runs a challenge initiatives program that encourages data scientists to work with subject matter experts to tackle problems in learning analytics, transportation, personalized medicine and health, and social science.

The personal attributes project is being led by Rada Mihalcea, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Collaborators will come from the college of engineering, school of information, school of public health, school of education, and department of statistics.

In a prepared statement, Mihalcea said the goal of her research is to expand the traditional analysis of educational success, which tends to focus on academic behavior, to include student life, personality and background outside of the classroom.

"Our project envisions using new ways of analyzing data to consider all aspects of a student's experience, lifestyle and background when developing tools to aid in educational success — of course, with due concern and assurances regarding the protection of students' privacy," she noted.

The other project is being led by Stephanie Teasley, a research professor in the school of information, collaborating with researchers from her own school, as well as the college of engineering, school of education and the departments of physics and astronomy. The research team intends to build a model of student achievement that uses multiple statistical and "big data" methods to build a fuller picture of students.

One of Teasley's goals is to pull together learning analytics work being done within several areas of the university into a single model to gain new insights into the learning process.

"This research has the potential to yield new understandings of how people learn," she said. "Our goal is to demonstrate how data-driven inquiry can improve teaching and learning in higher education."

"These interdisciplinary projects will result in new ways of helping students achieve their full potential," added MIDAS co-director Brian Athey, professor and chair of computational medicine and bioinformatics. "The projects will also advance the state of the art in data science, helping to address privacy issues and other important methodological concerns."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • AI robot with cybersecurity symbol on its chest

    Microsoft Adds New Agentic AI Tools to Security Copilot

    Microsoft has announced a major expansion of its AI-powered cybersecurity platform, introducing a suite of autonomous agents to help organizations counter rising threats and manage the growing complexity of cloud and AI security.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • central cloud platform connected to various AI icons—including a brain, robot, and network nodes

    Linux Foundation to Host Protocol for AI Agent Interoperability

    The Linux Foundation has announced it will host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol project, an open standard originally developed by Google to support secure communication and interoperability among AI agents.

  • open laptop in a college classroom with holographic AI icons like a brain and data charts rising from the screen

    4 Ways Universities Are Using Google AI Tools for Learning and Administration

    In a recent blog post, Google shared an array of education customer stories, showcasing ways institutions are using AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to transform both learning and administrative tasks.