Association of Institutional Research 2006 Annual Forum
May 14-18, 2006
Chicago, Illinois

660 Data Warehousing for Easier Reporting at A Public Technical College Using Estudias Enterprise by ZogoTech

Thursday, 2:10 pm-2:50 pm
Chicago 8, Level 4

Darline Morris darline.morris@tstc.edu (Author) Director of Institutional Effectiveness Research and Planning, Texas State Technical College Michael Taft mtaft@zogotech.com (Author) Zogo Tech

Abstract

This session will give a demonstration of the data warehouse Texas State Technical College Waco has deployed in partnership with ZogoTech. Users can quickly "slice and dice" data, play "what-if" scenarios, perform longitudinal cohort tracking, and create ad-hoc queries and reports in a secure, central location.

This session will highlight the role of Institutional Research and technology in retention efforts. We will explore Reporting, ETL, Metadata management and data cleansing and the advantages we have seen in reporting from a data warehouse instead of a live system.

I. Introduction

Dr. Darline Morris, Texas State Technical College - Waco
Michael Taft, ZogoTech

II. Problem / Motivation

Need retention program / process to reach out to at-risk students, those that drop out

Current approach

• difficult to gather all data
• time-consuming to generate
• calculations confusing
• numbers not accurate

Why data warehouse?

Why ZogoTech?

III. Solution

Start of Term
At the start of term (either during or after registration), the Institutional Effectiveness, Research & Planning office Research runs several reports designed to reach out to students at-risk.

• Start of Term Incoming Status Crosstab Summary - a gender/ethnicity crosstab look at the students enrolled in the current term by incoming status (new continuing, stop in, etc). Provided to Administrators.
• Start of Term Incoming Status Crosstab - same as the summary except broken down by academic program.  Given to each academic department.
• Start of Term Standing Detail - a listing of all students starting the term in either alert, probation or suspension status by program.  Given to the retention coordinator.

Monthly Withdrawals List/Contact List
On a monthly basis, identify students who drop classes and contact them.

• Contact List - phone number, email address of students who dropped. Provided to retention coordinator to reach out to these students to ensure they don’t lose their academic focus.
• Class Enrollments - show which classes students dropped, how many times they have retaken the class, and which classes they may be at-risk for dropping.

Software Demo

more demos

This section will show how to create the reports above in Estudias. Note that in a campus-wide deployment, administrators, retention coordinators and student services groups can run these reports on their own every day during registration, email the students, mail-merge letters and record the contacts for future assessment.

End of Term
These reports are generated either after grades are posted or at the beginning of the following term.

• End of Term Standing Detail - run after grades are posted for the term, this shows the performance of students who started the semester on alert, probation, suspension status (broken down by academic program).
• End of Term Standing Summary - same as above, but aggregated by academic program.
• End of Term Retention Status Crosstab Summary - run on the 12th class day of the following term, this report shows a gender/ethnicity crosstab of student retention (drop out, graduated, stop out, retained, etc). Provided to Administrators.
• End of Term Retention Status Crosstab - same as the summary except broken down by academic program. Given to each academic department.

Software Demo

more demos

This section will show how to perform more advanced, dynamic manipulation of retention data in Estudias.

IV. Questions

V. More Information

Estudias Brochure.pdf A look at how Estudias helps schools improve Retention, Recruitment and Results assessment.

Estudias Enterprise - IR.pdf Estudias is helping institutional researchers spend less time running repetitive reports and fighting with technology and more time doing meaningful institutional research.

More IR information

Note: this presentation was also given at TAIR 2006