Improving the management of the college enrolment process

Budget cuts, competition between colleges and a reduction in student numbers are highlighting the need for improved management of the enrolment process.  Dynistics Active Dashboards tool is at the forefront of making improvements happen.

Educational Dashboard - Numbers by
Learner Responsiveness

The need for a more commercial operational model has been forced on colleges as a number of economic and political factors take hold.  Education funding has been being constrained, competition between colleges to attract learners has intensified and the number of students enrolling on courses has dipped.  As a result the successful management of the learner enrolment process and the on-going retention of learners has never been more important.

In order to manage the process effectively colleges need to be able to answer questions such as:

• How effective is college marketing?
• Are admission policies being met?
• Has appropriate funding been received?
• What are the retention rates for different faculties or courses?
• What factors are influencing learner's levels of achievement?

For many colleges generating data related to these questions isn't the the issue: there are frequently multiple systems that capture a mass of detail.  The real obstacles to effective management are making the data available to the management team quickly enough for timely action to be taken, and consolidating the data into a format that can be understood, communicated and acted upon.

This is where Dynistics has made such an impression on the college sector with the widespread deployment of its Active Dashboards tool.  Active Dashboards pulls together data from multiple systems and gives users a graphical perspective in the form of charts, tables and graphs.  The data is displayed  "as it happens", which means that there is no more waiting for monthly or quarterly management reports before problems can be identified and put right.

In terms of enrolment activity Active Dashboards gives managers immediate access to, for instance, the status of enquiries, applications and actual enrolment.  It also allows managers to "drill down" into the data to analyse the situation in greater levels of detail.  In practice this means that they can:

College Dashboard - Average Student Commute Distance

• See which emails have provided the most enquiries
• Identify which geographical locations are generating the most applications
• Understand which faculty or course is most popular
• Look at individual learner performance by course type

Managers can use this information to change marketing activity, to review admission policies, to identify best practice by course or faculty, to change resource allocation and even to guide the provision of pastoral care.

To find out why establishments such as South Staffordshire College, Coleg Menai and Shrewsbury College have deployed Active Dashboards then contact our support team on 0121 506 9070, email info@dynistics.com or register for a free introductory online demonstration today.

Real time dashboard reports - South Staffs College

Graham Morley, Chief Executive Principal for South Staffordshire College, has this to say about the implementation of Active Dashboards in his organisation:

"It enables us get right into the nitty gritty of the organisation within seconds rather than hours"

In Graham's case this enhanced reporting capability enables him and his team to keep track of both student enrolment and learning activity and the financial and operational performance of the College.

How could real time reporting improve the way your organisation operates?

Find out more about the benefits of Active Dashboards today. Contact us via email info@dynistics.com or phone 0121 506 9070.

Business Dashboard Examples

Multi-cylinder chart type

You might not have spotted it before but Dynistics has devoted an entire section of its website to showing off examples of its sector focused business dashboards.

If you navigate to our Active Dashboards gallery you'll see our latest dashboard entities such as Gantt charts, multi cylinder displays and logarithmic lines, which we have developed to help our clients make maximum use of their data.

The tabbed menu at the top of the page will lead you to individual dashboard displays that illustrate how organisations in different industry sectors use Active Dashboards data visualisation and analysis capability.

Recruitment chart - Candidate Source

If you select the "Recruitment" tab, for instance, then you will see that there are 3 different dashboards to choose from; Advertising, Finance and Operations.  What's interesting to many people about this is that it shows the flexibility of the dashboard tool.  Active Dashboards can access data from virtually any system and provide customised data visualisation for anybody who needs it, in the format that suits them best.

If you click on the tabs in the Recruitment section you'll see that the data being displayed and dashboard entities being used are very different, focusing as you'd expect on promotional return, key financial indicators and sales team performance.

To find out more about how Dynistics could create a business dashboard for your organisation then book your own one-to-one web presentation, call us on 44 (0)121 506 9070 or email info@dynistics.com.