Customer success stories

Rice University solved the student engagement challenge with ELSA

Written by Taylor Chu | Aug 15, 2022 3:19:21 AM

BACKGROUND

Rice University is ranked among top 20 best universities by U.S. News & World Report. They welcomed students from all over the world and created a diversified culture and community here. Hence, English became more important than ever to cross out language barriers and develop a built-in relationship among students, staff and lecturers. 

 

The large population of international students studying at Rice University has raised the demands for an English training program to help improve students’ speaking skills and engage them to contribute to the course. That’s where ELSA comes in to help Rice University create an interactive and engaging English course.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT & IMPROVEMENT

Rice University runs a course focused on improving international graduate students’ spoken English skills. ELSA is used to supplement in-person instruction, to support students in improving their pronunciation and communication. 

Results tracking

  • Engagement: 
    • Students practice 8 minutes / day on average.
    • Top performers practice 20 minutes / day.
  • Improvement: 
    • Rice students increased their pronunciation score by 7% over their initial diagnostic score after only 6 weeks.  
    • For the most active ELSA users, students who had used the app for over two hours cumulatively, average improvement jumped to 14%

TESTIMONIALS

As an administrator, if I am paying for this out of my own budget, I want to make sure students and instructors are using it and that it’s generating results. ELSA’s dashboard allows me to do this easily. I definitely feel that ELSA has been worth the money my program is spending on it.” 

JENNIFER WILSON, Director, Program in writing & communication

Each week my students do an oral presentation, and I can tell whether they have been practicing with ELSA or not. ELSA has also allowed me to continuously track and support students’ progress, through tracking the dashboard, I’m able to identify when students are falling behind and prompt them to increase their practice time.”

KATERINA - Lead instructor

FEEDBACK SESSION

ELSA stood out from other products for its simplicity, specialization, and affordability

  • No physical language lab / hardware required
  • No additional software required
  • Specialized focus on communication & pronunciation
  • Accessible price point

Students are practicing their English more due to the convenience of ELSA

ELSA customizes learning path for each student; helps teacher to provide continuous, personalized support

CONCLUSION

It is without a doubt that higher education institutions have applied technology for a long time to manage their huge students’ data and information. However, the rising trend among universities is to switch from a process-centric platform to a more relationship-centric platform which focuses on building an interactive student community. ELSA’s AI technology can help you achieve this with lower cost for hiring native teachers while improve your students’ result.