PAR Framework and the North Dakota University System (NDUS) Establish Statewide Partnership
Chapel Hill, NC (PRWEB) July 21, 2015 -- PAR Framework, Inc., the leading independent, non-profit provider of learner analytics as a service, today announced that the North Dakota University System (NDUS) and 10 of its institutions will join the University of North Dakota (UND) as members of the PAR Framework. Governed by the State Board of Higher Education, the NDUS is a unified system of higher education that includes two research universities, four regional universities, and five community colleges. The decision to join PAR as a system comes as part of an ambitious 5-year plan that takes advantage of an 11-campus system wherein the institutions’ unique missions are focused to use the collective strength of the system and its institutions for the benefit of students, businesses, and the state.
This effort will actively leverage PAR’s openly published common data definitions, data gathering, handling, and analysis resources to standardize meanings for metrics that predict points of student loss in the U.S. higher education ecosystem. PAR works collaboratively with a heterogeneous set of U.S. higher education institutions and has developed deep experience building normalized datasets that enable effective and meaningful outcomes comparisons in a way that reflects the changing landscape of educational models.
“PAR is committed to producing metrics that generalize and solutions that scale,” said Beth Davis, PAR Framework’s CEO. “When our partners at the University of North Dakota saw opportunities to use normed data and generalizable findings to respond to the needs of all North Dakota students, they worked proactively with North Dakota University System, partner institutions, and the legislature to make this happen. PAR partners have seen great value from common standards for outcomes data at student, program, and institutional levels. NDUS’s interest in exploring relevant metrics for today’s postsecondary reality as a system is tremendously exciting. We look forward to collaborating to accelerate these efforts.”
“UND took advantage of PAR membership to support our university-wide culture of vision, strategic decisions, and accountability,” said Dr. Joshua Riedy, vice provost and chief strategy officer at the University of North Dakota (UND). “Integrating PAR into the UND technology ecosystem provides a comprehensive system to track and identify students in need of intervention and is helping us achieve our institutional goals in retention, graduation, and student success. During our first 18 months with PAR, UND has experienced a 5 percent increase in student retention and a 2 percent increase in graduation. We see those gains as a first step in dramatically improving student outcomes.”
“PAR’s common data definitions and scalable frameworks will facilitate meaningful cross-institutional benchmarking that will help us scale the most effective interventions across the system,” said Dr. Lisa Feldner, vice chancellor for information technology and institutional research for the North Dakota University System (NDUS). “Based on UND’s experience, we expect we will see significant improvements across the state in graduation and student success,” she said, adding, “Having PAR as a common vehicle across the system will promote better informed decision making for student success the rule, rather than the exception, in the State of North Dakota.
ABOUT PAR
The Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework is an independent, non-profit provider of learner analytics as a service. PAR offers educational stakeholders a unique multi-institutional perspective for examining dimensions of student success that will help improve retention in U.S. higher education. PAR improves student success with predictive models and collaborative benchmarks and frameworks that identify critical points of student risks and links interventions and services for at-risk students at the points of greatest need. PAR is distinguished among the many data analytics solutions emerging in the education domain by its common, openly published data definitions and student success frameworks. For more information about PAR please visit: http://www.parframework.org
ABOUT PAR MEMBERSHIP
PAR membership is open to all accredited institutions of postsecondary education in the United States. PAR welcomes institutional partners that want to demonstrate how its programs contribute toward student success innovation. For information about how to join PAR Framework please visit: http://www.parframework.org/contact/
Ellen Wagner, PAR Framework, http://www.parframework.org, +1 4156132690, [email protected]
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