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Features
2006 Campus Technology Innovators: Student Information Systems
7/22/2006
ALEXANDER: UNTHSC’s SIS is
keeping
medical students ahead of the curve.
Challenge Met
As at most medical schools, the large class sizes and lecture environment at the University of North Texas Health Science Center meant little faculty-student interaction. Individual students at extreme ends of the performance curve easily attracted faculty and administrators’ attention, but the majority of students floated from matriculation to graduation anonymously.
Yet, at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (a component school of UNTHSC), administrators wanted a better way to track students, and protect them from academic— and financial—pitfalls. “The average indebtedness of a medical graduate is more than $110,000,” says Jerry Alexander, director of academic information services at UNTHSC. “When a student is assisted through a proactive approach and is able to successfully graduate, the large investment of the student, as well as the state of Texas, is protected. Our goal is ‘no medical student left behind.’”
Alexander and the Academic Information Services team stepped up to the plate to design and implement a comprehensive online student tracking system.They focused on bringing all reports into real-time, electronic delivery: As soon as a student exam is graded, that information is immediately available online, integrated into his complete academic record, with full drill-down capability— from pre-admission data through the most recent test grade. So much data now is available that a full counseling report for a fourth-year student can run over 15 pages.
To cut data interpretation time, visuals are a prominent report element. Scores are colorcoded to reflect deviations from the class or national mean, and deviations are presented in bar charts, using the same colors. “If I see a lot of yellow on the report, I know I have a student in jeopardy,” says Bruce Dubin, associate dean for medical education,“and if I see a lot of green, I’m dealing with an excellent student.” In addition, says Alexander, the color coding aids in developing and applying academic policies. “A student with two yellow bands on a grade report for a semester will automatically be referred for academic assistance— thus at the first sign of difficulty, students are being directed to our academic counselors for guidance.”
How They Did It
At the inception of the project, Alexander and his team looked for technologies that met five key criteria: 1) internet-based; 2) a strong underlying database; 3) integrated graphics capability; 4) a robust middleware component allowing native connections to multiple data sources; and 5) strong business intelligence features, including data visualization and rule-based color coding. “
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