Jake Harding FAHEP (He/Him), Student Enrichment Manager, Manchester Metropolitan University:
On Thursday 1st May 2025, the Manchester Metropolitan University was lucky enough to host the Data-Driven Engagement: Shaping the Future of Student Success Conference, held by Simac. Working in the student experience space, I am admittedly cautious when it comes to the concept of data-driven engagement, having seen too many times before the conflation of attendance and engagement. However, I was also lucky enough that the conference was only two floors below my office (and was free, thank you Simac!) so I went along and ‘attended’ with an open mind…
And I was not disappointed; the sessions were insightful and invaluable but also made me reflect on what we mean by student engagement and success, working on the axiom that an engaged student is a successful student:
Attendance = Engagement
In-person attendance of labs, lectures, seminars, workshops and even extracurricular activities can be easily measured, as can online attendance of asynchronous and hybrid content. Job done.
Attendance ≠ Engagement
But wait. What if the student is only in attendance by proxy, loaning their student card or login credentials to a peer to register on their behalf? What if they are distracted? What if they are asleep? In such cases, they have attended but are we confident that they have engaged?
Attendance < Engagement
Okay, so maybe we can agree that attendance is simply (perhaps too simply) one form of engagement, it is easily measured but not entirely accurate. Thus, we can use this insight to make data informed decisions, as opposed to purely data-based decisions. Job done.
Extracurricular < Asynchronous < Hybrid < In-person
But wait. Consider the inequality above. In essence, are all measures of attendance equally weighted forms of engagement and could/should we be building this into our systems thinking? If so, I would say that the inequality above seems to me to be the traditional hierarchy. Although, a word of warning:
“Those who believe that what you cannot quantify does not exist also believe that what you can quantify, does.”
Aaron Haspel
In such a sprawling and diverse sector, individuals and institutions will inevitably be divergent on what counts and what counts more. Consider the, purposefully provocative, inequality below.
Part-time work experience, paid or unpaid > Clubs, societies and volunteering, on or off campus > In-person, hybrid or asynchronous
Whatever our personal beliefs about what measures of attendance count, and which count more when it comes to the question of student engagement and success, as the traditional student experience shifts, the answer also shifts from the traditional blunt instrument of the singular attendance metric.
So, perhaps the pertinent question is, how can we sharpen our engagement instruments? It has been my pleasure to work with Martha Horler, The Data Goddess, on this article, to try to provide some potential answers…
Martha Horler FAHEP (She/Her), Managing Director, The Data Goddess:
Data drives our decisions, fuels our systems, and underpins our policies, but is it always the best lens? Can we do better than to simply count what is easy to count? Do we want to treat our students as datapoints, or as people?
I know, this is heresy in many quarters, and possibly not what you would expect to hear from someone who has made a career out of managing and analysing data. But hear me out. I believe that we should be using data as one of the tools in our quest to help students, but not the only one, and we should bear in mind that just because we can measure something, that does not necessarily make it important.
Historically, attendance monitoring was a simple headcount:
I still remember hoping the sign-in sheet would make it round the lecture theatre before time ran out. But as the sector professionalised and digital systems became embedded, this expanded into performance metrics and visa compliance. Alongside this, engagement began to emerge – not as a synonym for attendance, but as an attempt to capture a student’s connection to their learning in all its messy, complex reality.
If we are serious about using attendance and engagement data to support student success, we need to start by giving students access to the data being collected about them, along with a clear explanation of how it will be used. Transparency builds trust and helps students make informed choices. It also shifts the conversation from being about surveillance to one of shared responsibility and support. Students should know not just what is being measured, but why, and what the expectations are in the context of their course.
A single attendance metric is a blunt instrument:
It fails to reflect the diversity of teaching methods, learning styles, and personal circumstances across higher education. Instead of relying on fixed thresholds or one-size-fits-all dashboards, we need to personalise the approach. That means designing metrics that take account of life load, course structure, level of study, and mode of delivery. It also means looking beyond raw attendance and considering meaningful engagement – what participation looks like in context, and how it contributes to learning. The goal is not to standardise behaviour, but to understand and respond to individual patterns of study.
We already tailor our communications to students, so why not tailor our metrics too? A system that treats a full-time lab student the same as a part-time commuter or a student with caring responsibilities will not reflect reality. The answer is not to abandon data, but to embed it in systems designed for flexibility, judgement and empathy. Because students are not just datapoints, they are people, and our metrics should reflect that.
Curious about bringing more compassion into your data practices? Martha Horler (The Data Goddess) works with AHEP Consulting to help institutions move beyond headcounts and design engagement approaches that truly put students first. She’d love to chat if you’d like to explore how this could work in your context.
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