Last month, Achieving the Dream, a non-governmental reform organization, hosted a conference to discuss how to encourage and support nontraditional students. As Sydney Johnson wrote recently in EdSurge, the participants were looking to find new ways to provide guidance for this underserved group.

In her presentation, Hoori Kalamkarian, a researcher at the Community College Research Center, suggested that technology-assisted advising could be a new way to gather data and use data smartly, but warned about the dangers of algorithmically reinforcing biases.

Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of higher education policy at Temple University, told EdSurge that technology should be used for more than advising, emphasizing that many college students still struggle financially and otherwise. “I’d like to see predictive analytics focused more on using data on basic needs security to target interventions,” she said.