Five Learning Center Metrics to Report to Your Provost
What to count, how to compare fairly, and how to fit it on one page. A MICLCA primer for directors.
Satisfaction surveys tell you students liked a session. Provosts and deans want to know whether the center reaches the students it should and whether those students do better. These five measures answer that, and most centers can produce them from data they already have.
1. Reach
Count unique students served, not visits, and report them as a share of a meaningful denominator: total undergraduate enrollment, and enrollment in the courses you support. “We served 31% of students in introductory chemistry” is clearer than “we logged 7,000 visits.”
2. Intensity
Show how use is distributed: how many students came once, two to four times, and five or more times. One-time visits and regular use are different services, and the split shows whether students come back.
3. Course outcomes, compared fairly
Compare course grades or DFW rates (D, F, and withdrawal) for students who used the center with students in the same courses who did not. Students who seek help differ from those who do not, so a raw comparison can mislead in either direction. At minimum, compare within the same course and term, and account for prior academic preparation such as high school or cumulative GPA. If your institutional research office can match users to similar non-users, ask for it.
4. Equity of access and outcomes
Break reach and outcomes down by the groups your institution tracks, such as first-generation, Pell-eligible, and transfer students. Two questions matter: are the students most likely to struggle the ones using the center, and are outcome gaps smaller among users than non-users?
5. Persistence
Report next-term enrollment for users and comparable non-users. Retention is the outcome senior leaders track most closely, and even a modest difference carries weight when it holds across several years.
Fitting it on one page
- One headline number per metric, with the same number for the previous two years.
- One sentence on how the comparison was made, so the numbers are trusted.
- One student quote and one sentence on what you will change next year.