u-planner executives Carolina Arce, Regional Manager México & the Caribbean and Clark Jeria, Regional Manager US & Canada attended the fourth edition of the BETT Latin America Leadership Summit & Expo, held on October 27-28 in Mexico City.
At this international event, attended by nearly 2,000 representatives of higher education and K-12 institutions, the public had the chance to discover and experience the most innovative technological resources for the classroom.
The event, organized by BETT, leading organizer of education technology summits with the support of the Mexican Ministry of Education, UNESCO and Microsoft.
Douglas Fairbrother, Microsoft marketing executive and a member of the organizing committee, commented:
“We've doubled the number of speakers we’ve had, with several different streams. All the businesses I’ve spoken to absolutely loved the event so far, we’ve seen a huge response of all calibers, enjoying the events and engaging with everyone.”
As part of the event, u-planner presented a series of educational software for curriculum management, student retention strategies, and academic planning, and talked with the attendees at a stand where they had the chance to receive a personal caricature.
As part of the Learn Live seminars, Carolina Arce, Regional Manager México & the Caribbean, briefly introduced the benefits of predictions of educational software, to increase student retention rates.
In average, 40% of students abandon their studies at their university. That is why the u-planner executive illustrated how predictive analytics could help take actions in educational management and assess the risks of different students from leaving their studies.
Carolina Arce used the case of Netflix, the live streaming Brand, which has leveraged big data analysis on consumer habits and preferences, to create new series of movies like House of Cards. The television industry has high risks of losing money where a show has low ratings (and that is why they produce pilot episodes). However, the predictive use of big data has permitted the streaming giant to reduce risks and uncertainty to produce entire new seasons of series and movies.
These solutions give substantial savings to universities, reduce costs in terms of student retention in higher education.
In average, the defection of a single college student can cost up to US$1,000 a semester. In the case of an institution with 10.000 students, by reducing defection rates in 1% the university would:
Federico Noriega, Director for Innovation and Academic Services at the Universidad Tecnológica de México, valued these innovations.
“One is always learning from foreign speakers, who bring visions that are often difficult to develop in Latin America and Mexico.”
“We’re trying to see if we find a solution to the problems we’re having, and sometimes we find solutions to problems we don’t have yet, and we can deal immediately looking at the future.”