Educational Development Digest: March 2025

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By Catherine Ford, Program Director for Educational Development, Minnesota State

Looking at your individual or department’s student success data is important for continuous improvement. As a first step, course level or program level student success data may help you or your department identify a particular class or course as a focus area, but it may still leave you feeling unsure of your next steps about an intervention.

To problematize this further, this data may also reflect a course or courses from last semester or the last academic year, which may prompt the question: how can it inform change for me now with these students and this class? This is when close-to-practice data collection is very important.

Course level student success data helps determine on which course to focus, and close-to-practice data helps narrow the what and the how of strategies and implementation.

Let’s first clarify the term close-to-practice. According to the British Educational Research Association (BERA), close-to practice research is “shorthand for any research that focusses on educational practices in order to better understand or improve them.”

In higher education, close-to-practice research is taking a closer look through observation or reflection on pedagogical practices in the classroom, which can range from instructional strategies and classroom interactions to assignments or assessments, or student data or progress.

Although not explicitly identified as close-to-practice research, the Center of Urban Education (CUE) promotes “creating solutions through inquiry,” which is in alignment with BERA’s close-to-practice research definition highlighting understanding for improvement. CUE’s tools to support action inquiry provides specific guidance on inquiry strategies (CUE’s Phase Three: Creating Solutions Through Inquiry). CUE provide tools including guided observation, methods to analyze documents, and syllabus review strategies to engage in classroom inquiry.

Another syllabus review strategy is from the NED Equity by Design Cohort. Lisa Bergin, NED Equity and Inclusion Coordinator, developed a syllabus review activity inspired by Oregon State’s Center for Teaching and Learning: Writing a Warm Syllabus. This activity draws from Zaretta Hammond’s (2015) teaching personas outlined in her book Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and the Brain. Begin by coding sections of your syllabus to the various teaching personas to identify tone and underlying messages conveyed in the syllabus. Once complete, then “determine which teaching persona quadrant your syllabus most closely aligns to (“Equity by Design Cohort – Courses”). Hammond’s framework is one of many that could be utilized to investigate your syllabus.

Once you have collected some data from your observation, feedback, document investigations, or reflections, then ask yourself what you notice. Does the analysis reveal any trends or areas that could use additional attention or intervention? For example, does your syllabus investigation reveal language or policies that are inconsistent with your teaching philosophy or desired teaching persona? Does your peer observation reveal students are “engaged in critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and the creation of new knowledge/skills” (Equity by Design Cohort – Courses)?

Whatever the analysis reveals, this close-to-practice collected data informs your intervention or change in practice. Maybe the intervention is integrating an engagement strategy, adjusting language in a syllabus to be more inclusive, or revisit assignment directions for transparency. This is how it is possible to move from course level student success data to individual changes within a course intended to impact student success. Lean into close-to-practice research and data collection to understand, highlight, and improve your teaching to positively impact student success.

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By Elizabeth Harsma, Program Director for Technology Integrated Learning, Minnesota State

The Class Progress tool in D2L Brightspace can support close-to-practice observation. Class Progress helps you observe student engagement and performance. It shows information from Assignments, Content, Discussions, Grades, Quizzes, and more, all in one place.

Learn even more about learner analytics data in D2L Brightspace, Kaltura, and Zoom by reading these past Educational Digest articles: Using learner analytics as instructional insights and Actionable Insights from Video Analytics.

You can use Class Progress to:

• Use student data to continuously improve instruction.
• Identify when students need support, encouragement, or other interventions.
• Help students track their own progress across multiple areas, not just grades.

Note: Students can only see their own Class Progress data. Instructors can see Class Progress for all students.

Find Class Progress in D2L Brightspace

You can find Class Progress in the Assessment menu or the Course Admin menu of any course.

Customize Class Progress Indicators

You can customize the indicators displayed in Class Progress and User Progress.

Customize Class Progress

Class Progress provides a data dashboard view of four customizable indicators for all Students in the course. Click the Settings gear icon to customize the indicators.

Learn more in this captioned tutorial video from D2L Brightspace: Understand and Modify the Class Progress Page (2:07 minutes)

Customize User Progress

User Progress gives detailed insights on an individual Student user. Select any Student’s name from Class Progress to access their User Progress page. Select the Settings gear icon to customize the indicators and reports.

Learn More in this captioned tutorial video from D2L Brightspace: Use and Modify the Class Progress Report (2:24 minutes)

Class Progress and Equity

The Class Progress tool can support anti-oppressive and culturally responsive teaching methods. The points below align equitable teaching themes with uses of Class Progress.

• Academic Achievement. Practices that support high-level student learning. Strategies that remove barriers to learning.
  • Use student data to continuously improve instruction. Help students track their own progress across multiple areas, not just grades.
  • Supplement Class Progress with data from frequent, low-stakes practice activities.
• Humanizing. Methods that cultivate genuine caring and humanizing. Practices that affirm and represent students’ social identities (race, disability, gender, etc.) in content, images, scholars, sources, perspectives.
  • Identify when students need support, encouragement, or other interventions.
  • Supplement Class Progress with qualitative data from student-instructor learning partnerships that balance care and push.
• Challenge/Critique. Approaches that engage students in critical analysis of inaccurate messages found in dominant social narratives. Practices that empower students to challenge what and how they learn.
  • Use student data to continuously improve instruction.
  • Supplement Class Progress data with student feedback on what and how they learn. (Fritzgerald, 2020; Gay, 2002; Hammond, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Ultsch, et al., 2023)

Class Progress and Digital Accessibility

D2L Brightspace itself is an accessible platform. D2L regularly tests and audits their product’s functional performance for users without vision, hearing, speech, or with limited vision, hearing, speech, perception, manipulation, and cognitive abilities. D2L Brightspace platform currently meets Web Content Accessibility Standards 2.2 A, AA, and AAA. This exceeds the current WCAG 2.1 AA legal standard for digital accessibility.

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Turn on accessibility checkers when you start Microsoft applications like Word and PowerPoint. It works like a spell check, notifying you of areas that might be problematic for people with disabilities or anyone using assistive technology. Learn more about this tip.

View more digital accessibility tips.

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By Megan Babel, Communications Coordinator, Minnesota State

Bring your close-to-practice data collection to a session at the 2025 NED Teaching and Learning Conference on September 25-26, 2025. The theme this year is Promoting Equity through Data Practices. Sessions are being accepted through March 22, 2025.

Promoting Equity through Data Practices

At the mid-point of our Equity 2030 goal to eliminate equity gaps by 2030, we recommit to promoting equity through data-powered reflection, collaboration, and action. We approach equity gap data with an open and curious mindset as it can serve as a motivation for close-to-practice observation. Using those observations, we collaborate with colleagues and students to devise new processes, practices, and personas toward closing gaps. Inspired by the persistence of our students, we pursue our sustainable progress on our statewide, institutional, departmental, and personal equity journeys.

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