Want to know whether your students are exercising "soft skills" in Yellowdig? Upon request, we can produce interactive data visualizations that provide insight into students' competencies. Administrators can use these visualizations (along with a detailed CSV) to determine whether their students are meeting competency goals; to make competency comparisons across Communities; and to convey progress in measuring and promoting competency goals to accrediting bodies like the AACSB.
Each competency goals report is built around 5 competencies:
- Leadership
- Effective Communication
- Inquisitiveness
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Scholarly Prose
Each competency is operationally defined by its competency components, or "specific and measurable components embedded within the goal" (2020 Interpretive Guidance for AACSB Business Accreditation, p. 31). Measurement devices include computational linguistics (via nltk) and engagement tracking.
Whether (and to what extent) a competency goal has been satisfied is determined by the number of competency components satisfied. A competency component is satisfied if a specific quantitative threshold has been reached. The quantitative threshold for each component is an approximation of the median across Yellowdig.
To make all of this more concrete, let's consider a sample report.
Competency Summary
At a glance, we can see which Yellowdig Communities are Certified or Advanced Certified for specific competencies. By hovering over a bar, we can see (a) the components for that competency, (b) the threshold for each competency component, and (c) the number of competency components that must be satisfied in order to be Certified or Advanced Certified for that competency.
In the example above, 17% of Communities at the University of Yellowdig are Advanced Certified in Leadership. A Community is Advanced Certified in Leadership all three of these competency components are satisfied:
- At least 84% of all posts have at least one comment.
- On average, each student wrote 94.15+ post words per week.
- Each student received an average of 0.41+ post reactions per week.
Communities by Competency Score
We can compare individual Communities by their overall competency scores or by specific competency scores. A Community's overall competency score is simply the total number of competency components that Community has satisfied. By selecting or deselecting competencies, we can compare Communities' performance along narrower sets of competencies.
In the example above, U of Y Alumni Community satisfies the greatest number of competency components at the University of Yellowdig. We know from hovering over the green and blue bars that this Community is Certified in Leadership and Advanced Certified in Inquisitiveness. For operational definitions of Leadership and Inquisitiveness, we can consult the Competency Summary.
Competency Component Analysis
We can explore correlations between different competency components by selecting areas of competency intersection from the drop-down menu, which displays an explorable scatterplot. Each area of intersection is defined by two competency components—one for the x-axis and one for the y-axis. By hovering over a scatter point, we can see (a) which Community that point represents, (b) who owns that Community, and (c) for which competency goals it is certified. The size of a scatter point is proportionate to its overall competency score.
In the example above, there appears to be a modest positive correlation between weekly post views per student and weekly comment words per student, with significant variance along the y-axis. This suggests that, at the University of Yellowdig, students comment much more when they read more.
Interested in Subscribing to Reports?
Reach out to us at clientsucess@yellowdig.com for next steps.