Dare To Share

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Data-Driven Decision Making

Dare To Share

5/1/2007

By Linda L Briggs

This is one reason why the consortium member colleges—some of which could conceivably compete for online students—are more inclined to cooperate, not compete, say the consortium participants. In fact, when the member schools’ CAOs and distance learning directors meet, it is with the utmost sense of cooperation, reports Student Services Concierge Rhonda McElroy, a consortium staff member. “You put all seven colleges in a room and they work very well together. There’s give and take such as, ‘What can we do to this course?’ or, ‘Why don’t you take that course and we’ll wait for the next one down the road….’ It’s a great group to work with,” says McElroy. “It’s phenomenal to watch [the schools] interact without competing.”

Finding Trends and Patterns

As concierge, McElroy aids the member schools by providing individual institutional data on student success rates and retention figures. She also collects and analyzes data regarding how online learners at consortium schools are doing as a whole; she then compares these data with individual consortium member institutions. “At the end of the term, I give each college its individual report,” she explains. “I also give everyone the overall composite of the consortium,” she explains. In this way, while not seeing other individual member schools’ data, an institution can compare its progress in serving online students against data indicating overall consortium progress.

The comparative data, McElroy says, can answer member school questions such as, “Are we efficiently communicating with students? Are there some gaps that we need to investigate? Are there resources we need to develop? Are students getting what they need in order to be successful?” If not, says the concierge, schools can determine, for instance, what they can do to make sure the appropriate student services are in place online so that distance education students can be just as successful as oncampus students.

The power of allowing colleges to share data collection and comparison in a consortium becomes especially apparent at times, says Rheinschmidt. For example, smaller schools often confess that they can’t compare their online education data with face-to-face education data, simply because they are not yet able to collect and analyze online ed data that are of the same depth or quality as traditional institutional data. But, the consortium director observes, “We’ve had many people comment that the value of the data that they receive [through the consortium] for online courses and programs is actually better than what is currently available on campus. They simply may not have the time and resources to be able to collect the same types of data [individually].”

The sophistication of data collection and comparison has also grown since the consortium was launched.