News Story

OUAnalyse shortlisted for the THE 2019 Awards!

Miriam Fernandez, Wednesday 11 Sep 2019

OU Analyse has been shortlisted for the Times Higher Awards (THE 2019 Awards) in the category Technological or Digital Innovation of the Year!

Conceived in 2013 by Prof. Zdenek Zdrahal, OUAnalyse is a joint collaborative project between the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) and Data and Student Analytics (DSA).

The resulting product of this fruitful collaborative research and development effort is a learning analytics tool, currently available to all undergraduate modules at the OU. Based on trained Machine Learning models, this tool automatically identifies students at risk of failure within the institution. Not only the research behind this tool demonstrates its association with enhanced student performance, but an earlier deployment of this tool at the Czech Technical University has demonstrated its profound impact in terms of increasing retention. The number of failing students in this institution has dropped down by 49% since the 2015/16 academic year, generating an economic saving of more than 1M pounds. The results of OUAnalyse are currently being extended at two other UK universities as part of the the Institute of Coding.

The winners of the awards will be announced on the ceremony on Thursday 28 November at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London. It is expected the attendance of 1000 guests, including politicians, senior sector figures, and academic and professional university staff from all corners of the UK.

Wish us luck!

Team members: Zdenek Zdrahal, Martin Hlosta, Jakub Kocvara, Christotea Herodotou, Avinash Boroowa, Vaclav Bayer, Miriam Fernandez, Michal Huptych, Jakub Kuzilek, John Domingue, Bart Rienties, Kevin Mayles

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