Student Predictive Analytics Services docs
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| Submitted | Oct. 4, 2023 |
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Communications
From: Todd Feathers
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Georgia Open Records Act, I hereby request records related to student predictive analytics services used by the university.
For the purpose of this request, the term "student predictive analytics services" means software or computer code that employ machine learning models to generate predictions about individual students or groups of students for one or more of the following purposes:
a) To generate predictions about which prospective student names/contact information to buy from vendors such as the College Board, ACT, Cappex, etc. for advertising and recruiting.
b) To generate predictions about prospective students' likelihood to apply to, be admitted to, and/or enroll at the university.
c) To generate predictions about prospective students' financial aid needs and/or likely response to different financial aid packages.
d) To generate predictions about enrolled students' likelihood of passing a class, re-enrolling for another term (retention), and/or graduation (these tools are often called early warning systems).
e) To generate predictions about students' behavior and/or safety (e.g. whether a student is at risk of harming themselves or others).
f) To generate predictions about academic integrity (e.g. test proctoring software and generative AI detection).
g) To generate predictions about which majors or careers students are best suited to.
My request applies to student predictive analytics services used by the university during the 2022-23 academic year, including those developed in-house by the university or purchased by the university from a vendor.
For each student predictive analytics service the university used during the 2022-23 academic year, I request:
1) All active contracts, statements of work, and data sharing agreements between the university and the vendor regarding the student predictive analytics service.
2) Records defining the input variables and their weights/relative power for each student predictive analytics service model the university used during the 2022-23 academic year (In other words, records defining the data points fed into each predictive model and their respective impacts on the model's output).
3) Records documenting the accuracy (AUC, true/false positive, specificity, lift, etc.) of each student predictive analytics service the university used during the 2022-23 academic year.
4) Any validation studies, disparate impact studies, or other records documenting how the student predictive analytics services the university used during the 2022-23 academic year performed across different student groups (e.g. Black students vs. Hispanic students, male students vs. female students).
I ask that all fees be waived as I am a journalist and intend to use the requested records to publish articles in the public interest about the operations of a government agency. If you choose to impose fees, I ask that you provide an explanation of the fees, including the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable of fulfilling the request.
If you choose to reject this request or redact portions of responsive documents, I ask that you cite the statutory exemptions and associated case law underlying your decision to withhold each portion from public review.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 3 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Todd Feathers
From: Georgia Southern University
Hello,
We have received your request and are in the process of preparing the
relevant documents for you.
I will email you with the requested documentation once it has been sent to
me from our records department.
Thank you for your time and patience as we work on this request.
Sincerely,
Jarvis Steele
Assistant University Counsel
--
Office of Legal Affairs
Georgia Southern University
P.O. Box 8020
Statesboro, GA 30460
(912) 478-7481 (phone)
(912) 478-7488 (fax)
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Georgia Open Records Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on Oct. 4, 2023. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Georgia Southern University
Hello,
We are still attempting to gather the relevant documents. I will continue
to provide you updates, however, these records are not ready for production
yet.
I will update you closer to the end of the week regarding the status of
these records.
Thank you for your time and patience and have a great day.
Sincerely,
Jarvis Steele
Assistant University Counsel
--
Office of Legal Affairs
Georgia Southern University
P.O. Box 8020
Statesboro, GA 30460
(912) 478-7481 (phone)
(912) 478-7488 (fax)
From: Todd Feathers
Hello Jarvis,
I wanted to follow up on this request to ask if you could provide an estimated date of completion or a status update?
Thanks very much for your help!
Todd Feathers
From: Georgia Southern University
Mr. Feathers,
A majority of the material that you are looking for is nonexistent, because
we do not use this software. We rely on human expertise for a majority of
these functions, and have avoided more intrusive software in order to
provide our students a more personalized experience.
a) We do not use predictive analytics software in order to do this. This is
a process that requires students to manually submit information, and our
staff then goes through and manually sorts through this information to
reach out to prospective students.
b) We use the Georgia Match program to do this, which is a Georgia wide
initiative that we are not in control of.
c) We do not use predictive analytic software for this. We rely on the
resources that FASA uses, and will augment our process based on whatever
changes occur to the FAFSA process.
d) Yes, we use:
- EAB's Early Alerts for "progress reports" at weeks 4 and 8 to enable,
at the user-level, data for faculty and advisors to reach out to "at-risk"
students (retention).
- Qualtrics surveys for currently enrolled students who have not yet
registered for the following term (retention).
- EAB's Historical Course analysis, at a program scale, to identify
sequence or offering bottlenecks (progression to graduation).
- EAB's Change of Major Analytics and, recently, METRICS to see
migration patterns and additional course load requirements created by
CoM--previously we used EAB's APS to do the same (progression to
graduation).
- A number of internally generated Tableau dashboard on delivery and
schedule timing to review success in those areas (retention).
e) We do not use anything like this. Student Affairs uses Maxient to
collect and record submitted behavioral reports that could be informative
for students who might have repeated instances of need or care, however,
that is a manual process.
f) We do not have anything like this.
g) We do not use any software of this nature. Rather than predict what
majors students will take, we have our staff manually audit what majors
students are taking in order to keep track of Major health.
I have shared our EAB agreements with you, however, we do not have the
other information that you have requested.
Thank you for your time and patience and have a great day.
Sincerely,
Jarvis Steele
Assistant University Counsel
--
Office of Legal Affairs
Georgia Southern University
P.O. Box 8020
Statesboro, GA 30460
(912) 478-7481 (phone)
(912) 478-7488 (fax)
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