Title: Visual Progression Analysis of Student Records Data,
Abstract: University curriculum, both on a campus level and on a per-major level, are
affected in a complex way by many decisions of many administrators and faculty
over time. As universities across the United States share an urgency to
significantly improve student success and success retention, there is a
pressing need to better understand how the student population is progressing
through the curriculum, and how to provide better supporting infrastructure and
refine the curriculum for the purpose of improving student outcomes. This work
has developed a visual knowledge discovery system called eCamp that pulls
together a variety of populationscale data products, including student grades,
major descriptions, and graduation records. These datasets were previously
disconnected and only available to and maintained by independent campus
offices. The framework models and analyzes the multi-level relationships hidden
within these data products, and visualizes the student flow patterns through
individual majors as well as through a hierarchy of majors. These results
support analytical tasks involving student outcomes, student retention, and
curriculum design. It is shown how eCamp has revealed student progression
information that was previously unavailable.