Pulse. Reading cohort morale
Pulse is how a cohort says it is going, drawn from the weekly check-in. It is the single best early read on whether a group is settling or struggling. Used well, it tells you where to look before a problem reaches the inbox.
The value of Pulse is that it is leading, not lagging. A help request tells you someone is already struggling enough to reach out. Pulse can show a cohort drifting before anyone raises a hand, which is exactly the window where a briefing or an event can change the trajectory. Reading it well is a quieter skill than working the inbox, but over six weeks it is where you prevent problems rather than respond to them.
What it measures
Each week, students answer one check-in. Their responses roll up into four buckets (broadly: thriving, finding their feet, wobbling, and asking for a hand) and Pulse shows the distribution across the cohort, week by week, alongside how many people responded.
Pulse itself is aggregate only: a picture of a group, never a list of individuals, with small groups suppressed (below). Acting on a specific student, reaching out to someone who flagged they're struggling, happens in the cohort browser's profile drawer, not here. Students are told plainly in their own guide that support staff can see their individual responses, so this isn't a back door: Pulse is the group lens, the profile drawer is the individual one, and opening a student's record is audit-logged.
The why behind the number
Pulse tells you how many are struggling. Two sections further down the same report tell you why, drawn from a gentle follow-up students get after a wobbling check-in. What's weighing on students is the cohort total: belonging, money, academics, and the rest. And the shape of the six weeks lays those same concerns out week by week so you can see when each one peaks. Both are aggregate-only and small-cell suppressed, like Pulse itself.
The daily check-in
The same report carries one more read, lower down: The daily check-in. This is a different instrument from the weekly one above, and it is worth keeping the two apart in your head.
The weekly check-in is one answer a week, inside the arc, and it is the one your support is built around. The daily check-in is optional and open-ended: a student can note how a day went as often as once a day, from Wellbeing while the arc is running and from their home once it is behind them. Students who have finished the arc also get a gentle fortnightly nudge, never a gate.
This section rolls those replies up exactly the way Pulse does: the latest answer per student, the four-bucket distribution, what's weighing on the ones who flagged a wobble, and a month-by-month concern trend once there are two months to compare. It only appears once at least five students have used it, so early in a cohort's life it stays hidden rather than show a thin read that could point at a person.
A student can attach a private note to a day, in their own words. It is theirs. No staff view shows it, this report included, and the product tells them so on the screen where they write it. What reaches you is the sentiment, and the reason they picked if they flagged a wobble, never the words.
Because the daily check-in now spans the whole journey, read it as the texture between weekly answers rather than as a post-arc epilogue. A student who is steady every Monday but wobbling most days in between is telling you something the weekly line alone would smooth over.
Read the curve, not the number
The most common mistake is reacting to a single week. Treat one quiet week as noise. What matters is direction over time.
- A two-week slide across the cohort is a signal worth acting on.
- A dip that lines up with a public holiday or an exam block is usually expected.
- A response count falling away can matter as much as the sentiment itself.
That last point is easy to miss. If sentiment looks steady but fewer students are responding each week, the people dropping out of the data may be exactly the ones struggling most. A shrinking response count can be the early warning that a flat sentiment line is hiding.
There is no universal "good" distribution. Week one of any intake tends to look unsettled. Read each week against the same cohort's previous weeks, not against some ideal or against a different cohort with a different make-up.
Look at the shape across weeks, then decide whether it warrants a briefing, an event, or a closer look.
Why small groups disappear
When a slice of the cohort is small, Pulse hides the breakdown rather than show it. A number only appears once at least five students sit behind it.
This five-student floor is deliberate. With fewer than five, a percentage could point at a specific person, which would turn an aggregate wellbeing read into individual surveillance. The wall is what lets the check-in stay honest: students trust it because no one can be singled out of it.
The practical consequence is that small cohorts, or finely sliced filters within a cohort, will show suppressed cells. That is the system working, not data missing. If you need a read on a small group, widen the slice until enough students sit behind it rather than treating the blank as a gap to fill.
Taking it to leadership
Pulse exports a board-report snapshot: the week-by-week history as a data file, so the cohort story travels without anyone needing console access. Because the export carries the week-by-week history, it shows the trajectory rather than a single snapshot, which is the same "read the curve" principle applied to the people you report to.
Common questions
Why do the home page and Insights disagree about whether there is enough data?
Two different bars, both deliberate. Insights holds breakdowns back below five responses, which is the privacy floor: below it, an aggregate could be read back as an individual, and the same floor is enforced in the database and written into your agreement with us. The home page's headline percentage waits for ten, which is a reliability bar, not a privacy one: a "% thriving" over a handful of replies swings wildly and would bury a struggling week under one cheerful response. The stricter bar is derived from the privacy floor in code, so the two can never quietly drift apart.
Why is a slice of my cohort showing no numbers?
Because fewer than five students sit behind it. Pulse suppresses any breakdown below that floor so an aggregate cannot be read back as an individual. Widen the slice until at least five students are behind it.
Sentiment looks fine but fewer people are responding. Is that okay?
Watch it closely. A falling response count can matter as much as the sentiment itself, because the students who stop responding may be the ones struggling most. A flat line over a shrinking sample is not the same as a flat line over a steady one.
Can I see an individual student's check-in trend in Pulse?
No. Pulse is aggregate only, by design. To follow up with a specific student, use the cohort browser's profile drawer, which shows that student's recent check-in responses and help requests. That individual view is audit-logged, and students are told their support team can see it.
Next steps
Related
The fastest answer is usually one question away.