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Spotlight

Business Intelligence Growing in Popularity in Higher Ed

11/18/2008


Another institution finding success with its BI tool is Tarleton State University, whose main campus is in Stephenville, Texas. The university has close to 10,000 students currently enrolled and according to Brad Chilton, executive director of the university's Office of Planning, Evaluation and Institutional Research, the school has been using WebFocus since late 2006 as a vehicle to give a range of users access to data about the university.

Through both a public Web site and a password-site protected meant only for students, faculty and staff, WebFocus is used to offer a controlled inroad to the university's student information system, Banner, as well as other systems such as financial aid. The BI software is also used to prepare reports for the Texas state board governing aspects of higher education.

In one use, data is extracted daily about both registered students and those applying for admission. That allows administrators to compare enrollment patterns historically based on student characteristics, using some 30 different attributes stored in the data warehouse, Chilton said. "It gives us an historical reference; we use WebFocus to compare enrollment patterns for this day this year versus this day last year; we can do the same thing for students who applied for admission... The comparisons have been very handy."

A popular WebFocus report at Tarleton is a new student advising report that is run on all incoming students as they attend orientation sessions. It summarizes a range of student information, including previous courses taken, credits, and grades, testing information, and eligibility for advanced courses. Advisers can use the report to immediately spot holes in a student record that can block them from being able to register. Just a few years ago, according to Bonnie Hurford, senior database developer, that sort of report "was done by hand by student workers. I don't know how they managed it. Now it takes maybe five or ten minutes to run, where it might have taken a week to run a few years ago."