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Measuring impact

Institutions2 min read

A retention initiative has to be able to show whether it's working. First Six gives you three honest signals — how students feel, what they engage with, and what support actually happened — and clean ways to get them out for reporting.

The three signals

  • Wellbeing (pulse). Aggregate sentiment from weekly check-ins, by week, so you can see a cohort's morale trend through the critical first six weeks.
  • Engagement (reach). Which content students actually open, and completion by week — evidence that your effort is landing, not just being published.
  • Support activity. The volume, categories, and handling of help requests — the record of students reaching out and being reached.
Honest measurement, with individuals protected

Every aggregate view suppresses small groups so no individual is identifiable from a number. You get a truthful picture of cohorts without turning wellbeing data into surveillance of named students — see what we collect.

Getting it out for reporting

  • The evidence pack — a support-for-students snapshot (a rolling ~90-day window) built for board and institutional reporting. See the audit log and evidence pack.
  • CSV exports — pulse, engagement, help requests, and the activity trail export as spreadsheets for your IR team to analyse alongside your own data.

What it can and can't tell you

First Six can show that students are engaging, how they're feeling, and that support is happening — leading indicators that matter precisely because they move before a withdrawal does. Tying that to final retention or progression outcomes is work you do by joining these exports with your own student-record outcomes; the product gives you the early signal, not the enrolment ledger.

Common questions

Can you prove First Six improves retention?

The product measures the leading indicators — engagement, wellbeing, support uptake — in the window where intervention is possible. Linking those to your final retention figures is an analysis you run with your own outcome data and our exports; we're upfront that the product supplies the early signal, not the causal proof on its own.

Can we get the raw data into our BI tools?

Yes — CSV exports are designed for exactly that. See the audit log and evidence pack for the reporting surfaces.

Are the wellbeing numbers about individuals?

No — they're aggregates with small-group suppression. The unit of measurement is the cohort, not the named student.

The audit log and evidence packWhat First Six records for accountability — the immutable audit log, read auditing, exports, and what auditors get.What we collect, and what we don'tThe data First Six holds, what students can see about themselves, and the special handling that wellbeing data gets.The elevator pitchWhat First Six is, the problem it addresses, and how it works — in one read, no marketing fluff.
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