The Student Progress Dashboard is an important tool on RISIS for students to use throughout their time at the University of Reading. Student Voice Ambassador Eloise Barnes tells us a little more about what this is.
What is the Student Progress Dashboard?
The Student Progress Dashboard is a tool that allows you to view your assessments grades with their relative weightings. You can view your grades for your overall degree, or view them split between individual modules. This is a great way to track how you are doing and see if there are any areas you need to improve to reach your target.
As well as seeing the grades you have achieved, you can also set a goal for your target grade. For example; If you are aiming for a 2:1 or a First, you can set your higher and lower percentage goal between 60 and 69 for a 2:1, or 70+ for a First. Once this goal is set, it will show within your dashboard, and any marked assessments will be coloured according to whether you have met this goal or not.
You can choose to share your goal, which can help when discussing your progress with an Academic staff member, allowing them to tailor the conversation to help you reach your aspirations.
There are some handy links and tips on the other dashboard tabs such as study advice and your academic liaison librarians.
My overall experience of the dashboard has been overwhelmingly positive
How and when do you use this RISIS feature?
I use the RISIS feature to monitor my grades and make sure that I am making progress in achieving my target goal. Every time I get an assessment grade back, I will go onto RISIS to see whether I am reaching my goal. From this knowledge I know if I need to arrange a meeting with my module convener/tutorial leader to discuss how to improve my work for future assessments and understand whether I need to create an action plan or consider a different approach to my assignments. For example, I didn’t get the grade that I wanted in the first Autumn term assignment which I could see on the RISIS Student Progress Dashboard; as a result, I decided to take action and use the dashboard to force me to make changes and improve myself after tracking my progress.
Why do you use the dashboard?
I like to use the Student Progress Dashboard because I find it really helpful to see where I’ve come from and how my grades are improving, but most importantly where my grades aren’t where I want them to be. This helps me to stay proactive with my work, and to improve, ensuring my work is the best quality that I can produce. If I didn’t have the dashboard, I would probably only look at my grades in isolation, which wouldn’t help me see my progress in reaching my target grade. Therefore, I use the dashboard to have a holistic view of my university grades to see if I am meeting my target.
The dashboard became available during my first year, but I didn’t use it because I didn’t know about it.
How has this tool helped you at university?
This tool has been especially helpful for my second year at university. The dashboard became available during my first year, but I didn’t use it because I didn’t know about it. Last year I looked at it after exam season to find out my final year grade, but I didn’t fully take advantage of the tool until about halfway through Autumn term 2020. I use the dashboard to track my grades and identify the modules that I am doing better or worse in, this allows me to seek further feedback in my weaker modules and have an idea of how much time to allocate to each module for revision. Because of the dashboard, I have been concentrating on my weakest module to improve my technique to do well in the final exam.
The feedback and guidance tabs have really helped me – there are so many useful links
The feedback and guidance tabs have really helped me – there are so many useful links. For example, you can find the module descriptions for your current modules, making it easy to see the learning objectives and the contact details of the module convener. This is useful when looking ahead to choosing your next optional modules to see if there are any modules that you need to have already taken.
How has your overall experience been?
Since I started to use the dashboard regularly, my overall experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I didn’t really find it that useful in the first year because I didn’t understand the features and didn’t go onto RISIS very often. However, this year I have been able to easily monitor my progress and calculate where I need to be with my future assessments, to reach the goal that I have set. I can see my weaker modules and areas to improve, making it a lot easier to balance my time and focus my efforts on enhancing areas that need improvement.
Introduction video on the dashboard
This short 4-minute video shows students how to access and navigate the Dashboard pages. If you require a transcript please follow this link.
What to know more about the Student Progress Dashboard?