Cyber-infrastructure support for the integration and analysis of student success data

Increasing enrollment and retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, particularly for students from underrepresented groups, has become a national priority. Institutions often have multiple funded and unfunded efforts that address student success and broadening participation. One challenge is that they are typically discipline specific with little interaction with complimentary efforts outside of the sponsoring department or college. Such isolation can hinder wider adoption of effective practices and the development of innovative programs based on lessons learned. This project, funded by the NSF Innovation through Institutional Integration program, focuses on defining the cyberinfrastructure and communities needed to support the discovery and integration of student-success projects. The paper is organized as follows: discussion of the motivation; presentation of the infrastructure and models created to connect data collected by various projects, units, and programs; and description of MetaShare, a metadata management system that captures metadata about artifacts in support of integration across projects.