Dare To Share

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Data-Driven Decision Making

Dare To Share

5/1/2007

By Linda L Briggs

TOGETHER, THE ICCOC schools serve 10,000 online seats each semester; the consortium not only saves them money, but also supplies them with staff and expertise for data-driven decision-making.

As an example of the kind of analysis that the shared ERP system makes possible, Welch cites athletic financial aid data. Because his school now had access to such a sophisticated ERP system, administrators could collect information from the various databases in the system and analyze it in ways they were never able to previously. The analysis yielded information on the grade-point averages of each and every team at the university, along with financial aid costs per team, test scores, as well as the grade-point averages of every entering player. In the end, Welch says, “We discovered which team was recruiting smarter students, how well they were doing when they were here, and more.” He says the university has used that same method to examine resource allocation in order to compare details about student-faculty ratios and faculty loads, including how many of the students in a given class are associated with that class’s major, how many come from another major, and so on.

Still, one thing that his institution doesn’t yet do, he admits, is use data in a proactive way to identify trends and patterns. He attributes this not to a lack of data, but to a lack of staff trained to analyze the information. “That’s a weakness in smaller institutions,” he says. “We just don’t have full-time IT and information research staffs.” At least with ICE, Welch says, the data are available. The challenge, going forward, will be to analyze the data quickly, and then take appropriate action. “With ICE,” he says, “we now have the data at hand. So, when we do want to query something, we have some confidence that the data are in the system.”

Online Programs Partner for Power

In Iowa, however, another consortium of schools has succeeded in getting to the proactive analyze-and-act stage. The Iowa Community College Online Consortium ( ICCOC) is a voluntary partnership among seven (mostly small rural institutions) of Iowa’s 15 community colleges. Although the Iowa Community College System educates thousands of students annually, the schools’ various online degree programs do not necessarily have the technology purchasing clout and ability to store, access, and analyze data that large physical institutions may have. Together, however, the ICCOC schools serve some 10,000 online seats each semester. Formed in 1999, this consortium has been hugely successful in saving members money and enabling resource-sharing—including the staff and expertise to help ICCOC members make timely data-driven decisions.