Rhodes University

Rhodes University Pivots to Virtual Learning & Onboards New Tech by Reimagining Existing Data

Founded in 1904, Rhodes University has some of the best undergraduate pass, graduation, and postgraduate success rates in South Africa.

Rhodes's Challenge

As a traditional in-person learning institution, Rhodes faced a huge challenge when the pandemic hit, necessitating that they shift to all online instructional delivery in a matter of a few weeks.

How were they going to adopt a totally new mode of instructional delivery and get it up and running quickly? How could they track basics such as student engagement? The shift to virtual learning meant that there would be even more learner data available in their Moodle LMS, but how were they going to harness it to make informed pedagogical decisions efficiently?

Standard Moodle reports simply weren’t meeting Rhodes’ needs: they could only rely on the standard Moodle reports. They had some pre-configured SQL reports, but that was very time-consuming and costly. It took months to get reports that had meaningful insights in them.

Building a Successful Learning Solution

Neil Kramm, Rhodes University’s EdTech Academic Developer, decided to sign up for a free trial of IntelliBoard. IntelliBoard enabled Kramm to extract the statistical data gathered within Rhodes’ Moodle LMS and present it on a single dashboard in the form of printable charts, graphs, and analytics.

Kramm took full advantage of IntelliBoard’s customer success team, making onboarding really useful. It allowed the university to look at a lot more reports with somebody who knows what’s supposed to be there.

Delivering Impact

Rhodes University needed a simple, time-efficient method of tracking who was showing up to class, how often, and how long they were spending with the material. IntelliBoard’s point-and-click access to top-level statistics helped them quickly get the basics nailed down.

User Status and User Access reports were the most used ones, as they were helpful in analyzing the rate of student engagement. They were then able to go even further and use course reports to identify student behavior and engagement metrics they hadn’t had a chance to discover without IntelliBoard and use this data to inform their pedagogical strategies.