From Scattered Signals to Earlier Support: Introducing Data Insights

A national data initiative helping universities spot emerging risk sooner, understand placement patterns more clearly, and act before disengagement becomes attrition.

Every year, too many student nurses leave their programmes before qualifying. The reasons are complex, often personal, and frequently invisible to course teams until it is too late. Yet the early warning signs are there, hidden in the data that students and their supervisors generate every day through practice assessments.

Today we are announcing Data Insights, a collaboration between MyKnowledgeMap and Associate Professor of Digital Innovation in Nursing at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), Sian Shaw, that aims to turn that hidden data into a powerful tool for retention.

Data Insights builds directly on Dr. Sian Shaw's PhD research at ARU, which examined the electronic Practice Assessment Document (ePAD) records of student nurses and identified predictive patterns in the data that correlate with attrition risk. Her work demonstrated that the signals of disengagement, and the placement conditions that contribute to it, are already being captured. They are simply not being read.

That finding is the starting point for everything we are building.

"This project represents an important shift from reactive to preventative student support in nursing education. By using learning analytics from data already routinely collected within the ePAD, we have the opportunity to identify early signs of student struggle, improve placement experiences, and ultimately strengthen the future nursing workforce through timely, evidence-informed intervention." Dr Sian Shaw, Associate Professor of Digital Innovation in Nursing at Anglia Ruskin University

The opportunity we cannot afford to miss

MyKnowledgeMap's MyProgress ePortfolio platform supports over half of all student nurses in the UK. That means we hold one of the richest datasets in the country on student nurse placement experience, drawn from more than 40 partner institutions. Right now, that data sits largely unused in thousands of individual ePAD submissions.

Every university faces the same challenges: student nurse attrition and inconsistent placement experiences. But no single institution has the dataset large enough to see the full picture. By securely analysing anonymised data across the network, we believe we can change that.

What Data Insights will do

We have created a Data Insight module within MyProgress, a predictive analytics tool designed to reduce attrition and improve placement experiences. By applying the patterns identified in Sian's research at national scale, we aim to:

• Detect early warning signs of disengagement — flagging students who may be at risk before they reach a crisis point

• Identify placement challenges in real time — surfacing issues with specific placements, environments or supervisory arrangements as they emerge

• Enable proactive, evidence-based interventions — giving course teams the insight they need to act, not react

• Reduce the burden of mandated reporting — automating the intelligence that currently requires manual effort to compile

• Reduce costs and admin — cutting the financial and administrative burden associated with attrition and delayed programme completion

For universities using MyProgress, this will mean live dashboards and predictive alerts built into the platform they already use. Deans, course teams and practice partners will be able to see where students need support and intervene before disengagement takes hold.

As we are at the initial stage of analysing data there is lots more research to do into the findings. The way the data will be presented is still to be confrmed, but the indicative images below give you an idea. These are likely to change!

The first image shows a summary view of students grouped by an attrition monitoring score, the second image shows a more detailed breakdown of students grouped by an attrition monitoring score. The third image shows provider performance against drop off rate. The fourth image shows placement provider experience data. These images are just a prototype at this point, and the dashboards are likely to change, but they give you a feel for what can be done with Data Insights.

A national initiative, not a commercial advantage

This matters too much to keep to ourselves. While the Data Insights module will be available to MyProgress customers, we are committed to sharing what we learn with the wider sector, including universities that do not use our platform.

Student nurse attrition is a national problem. The workforce pressures on the NHS make it a national priority. If the data can tell us why students leave and what helps them stay, that knowledge should benefit everyone.

What comes next

We are at the beginning of this journey. There is work to do on data governance, on refining the predictive models, and on building the tools that will make this useful in practice. We will be sharing more in the months ahead, including early findings, case studies and opportunities for institutions to get involved.

There are many ways you can get involved - with research, analysis of results, or provision of data.

If you work in nursing education and want to be part of this conversation, we would love to hear from you.

Want to learn more about Data Insights?

Get in touch with us to find out how your institution can be involved.