Revealed: Durham modules ranked by student attainment

This article highlights how transparency in academic data, obtained through Freedom of Information Requests, allows for a detailed examination of student attainment across various university modules. By publishing granular performance metrics, institutions like Palatinate enable stakeholders to identify trends in educational outcomes, moving beyond generic university rankings to understand specific disciplinary strengths and weaknesses. The findings reveal significant disparities in achievement, with Physics and English demonstrating the highest overall attainment, while foundation year courses and certain language modules lagged behind. Specific modules showed extreme variation, ranging from near-universal first-class awards in specialized courses to zero firsts in others. These discrepancies suggest that factors such as module type, student cohort size, and assessment methods heavily influence results, prompting necessary questions about grading consistency and curriculum design. This report is highly relevant to the open data movement as it demonstrates the power of releasing raw educational statistics to the public. When institutions make detailed performance data accessible, it fosters accountability and empowers students and educators to make informed decisions. This transparency not only highlights areas for academic improvement but also reinforces the principle that data should be a public good, facilitating evidence-based discussions on higher education quality and equity.

Source: palatinate.org.uk
Published on 2024-04-24

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