Page 14 - CT Innovation in Education, 2021

Innovation in Education | GOOGLE CLOUD – learn more at cloud.google.com
Accelerating Student Success with AI
As colleges and universities struggle with enrollment, Google Cloud Student Success Services is poised to reinvent how institutions support and engage their students.
Jesus Trujillo Gomez
Cloud Strategic Business Executive for Higher Education and Research, Google Cloud
AS GROWTH IN UNDERGRADUATE CREDENTIAL earning has come to a standstill over the last year, colleges and universities are seeking new ways
to draw in the right candidates while also holding onto the students they have by bolstering student success efforts. Numerous institutions of higher education are finding success in strategic aspects of the academic lifecycle by embedding the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
There are several areas where Google sees the potential for “quick wins” in student success initiatives:
OPTIMIZED ENROLLMENT AND ADMISSION: For performing targeted outreach among those individuals who are most likely to convert from prospect to applicant to enrolled student. Automating the activities of credit transfer analysis, document analysis and personalized course planning can simplify the process of admission and registration, removing the hurdles in the way of successfully launching the student into his or her college experience.
VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE: For delivering 24/7 online tutoring and support in multiple languages answering common questions about required courses, financial aid and other topical subjects; and then using that digital interaction to expand the knowledge base and generate data for better decision-making, such as which new courses to launch or existing courses to expand upon.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Tracking engagement and predicting which students are at risk, to maximize retention. This is done through analysis of LMS data, measuring instructor readiness, gauging adoption of individual teaching tools to correlate usage with student outcomes, and even performing sentiment analysis to understand whether a given student is satisfied or frustrated.
Google Cloud Student Success Services in Action
To address these pressing needs, Google Cloud has developed a set of services that reinvent how institutions
support and engage their students. With Google Cloud Student Success Services, each school can start by activating just the functionality it needs. As requirements evolve and colleges and universities advance in their student success efforts, they can add more tools.
These services are proven. Currently, more than 10 schools internationally have adopted Student Success Services, including these institutions:
Penn State World Campus is using virtual assistants to get students the routine information they need more quickly while also freeing their academic advisers to handle the more complicated requests.
Recently, the University of Minnesota announced NXT GEN MED, a program that brings together cutting-edge technology and learning tools from Google Cloud to engage students virtually and match them with mentors at the Mayo Clinic for immersive learning experiences. The intention is to compress a four-year degree process into two years.
Another institution adopted the Google Cloud solution specifically to address enrollment challenges, as the school saw a decline in the number of out-of-state and international students enrolled. Now that college has changed how it recruits local and in-state students, to help fill the enrollment gap.
Implementation Lessons
As our professional services consultants — both from Google and from certified partners — have worked with customers to introduce Student Success Services, we’ve learned a
few things:
EVERY INSTITUTION IS DIFFERENT, AND SHORT AND QUICK IS BETTER. There is no black box that will work for everyone. Therefore, when a school opens an engagement with us, we sit with stakeholders to discuss what their top priorities are and what their current infrastructure looks like. The feasibility study is meant to determine what Student Success initiatives to try first, based on what will bring quick but meaningful wins.
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