Client

Rene Kizilcec
Email: <kizilcec@cornell.edu>

Student contact

Haoran Yang, <hy538@cornell.edu>

Project Context

Professor Kizilcec directs the Cornell Future of Learning Lab which investigates how technology and data can be used to better support students and teachers in higher education. One line of research is on supporting college students by leveraging data that is routinely collected for administrative purposes such as course enrollments. The US higher education system is unique in that it provides students time to explore before choosing their major. A better understanding of the course pathways that students take through college and towards particular majors can support (i) students in making more informed course and major choices, (ii) instructors in preparing course content based on students’ prior knowledge, and (iii) administrators in informing policy decisions.

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to create an interactive online visualization of college pathways based on course enrollment sequences. Users will be able to select a major and are then shown common course pathways to explore. The tool can be adopted by several universities including Cornell because course enrollment data is relatively standardized across institutions.

The project has three parts:

1. Develop an effective visualization approach for course sequences
2. Create an interactive visualization of course pathways that lead to a chosen major on the basis of course enrollment data
3. Create an application that allows institutions to securely upload enrollment data to use the tool