In the article, University Registrar Rodney Parks and Assistant Registrar for Data Management Reporting Casey Hayes advocate for the use of "Learner Profiles" to enhance courses and better serve students.
In an article published by education website eCampus News, University Registrar Rodney Parks and Assistant Registrar for Data Management Reporting Casey Hayes detail their research on “learner profiles” and how they can help faculty more effectively reach students.
In “Here’s why your college should create learner profiles,” Parks and Hayes seek to answer one question: “Why don’t registrars provide additional information about students to help faculty adjust the way they teach an individual section of a course?”
For their research, Parks and Hayes created reports for instructors teaching capstone courses at Elon. These reports told faculty what courses their students had previously completed, allowing instructors to tailor their coursework to help the subject matter resonate with their sections. In one instance, a faculty member was able to use the information in a report to find a majority of their students had taken economics at Elon. Because of the report, the faculty member invited an economics professor to a lecture to help tie economics into the course’s broader subjects.
Parks and Hayes write that given the positive feedback from the original trial, the university would like to expand the reports to include information such as global education experiences, languages learned or whether a student considers themselves to be an introvert or extrovert, to create a learner profile.
“Having a learner profile could help students engage more quickly, feel connected, and open the door to sharing more about who they are as adult learners,” Parks and Hayes wrote.
To learn more about the research by Parks and Hayes, read the entire article here.