Office of the Provost
Accreditation
Data and Tools for Decision Making
Topic: What data and tools does WSU use for institution-level decision-making?
Recent challenges/opportunities: Providing support in the form of data and tools for data-informed decisions is critical for budgetary responsibility and meeting the strategic goals of the University.
Recent actions taken:
- WSU is investing in the development of an integrated, enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence platforms. This provides more self-service access to campus users for business needs while maintaining necessary security, along with centralized training and data dictionary to support access and adoption. To date, the improvements have been focused on student data. In particular, these are admissions snapshots for year to year comparison, nightly snapshots for daily processing/tracking, and official census snapshots.
- The Student Success Collaborative (SSC), a product of Education Advisory Board (EAB), combines technology, research and predictive analytics to promote student degree completion. Through a platform known as SSC Campus, administrators, faculty, and staff are able to identify students who may need additional support. Students benefit from a coordinated and consistent platform to access academic advising, tutoring, and other student services.
- WSU Guide, another EAB product, is focused on providing students with access to a new, customized WSU mobile app. The app helps students explore majors, find necessary and valuable degree-specific resources, organize schedules, and receive important reminders and timely tips to help navigate their journey at WSU. Currently available at WSU Pullman, other campuses anticipate launch in fall 2018.
- The Campus Solutions 9.2 information technology upgrade project allows WSU to offer a more modern and flexible user experience within the myWSU environment.
- Activity Insight, a software product from Digital Measures, is designed to organize, manage, and report on faculty activities and CV data. Among its many benefits, Activity Insight can be tailored to meet the reporting needs and goals of each unit. In particular, Activity Insight can capture, and prepare for reporting, information that must be provided to program accrediting bodies.
Current/future areas of emphasis:
- 2020 implementation of a modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for human resources, payroll, and finance).
- With the implementation of the ERP, WSU will implement a consolidated data warehouse to include HR, Finance, Payroll, Student, and Research data. Building on the work completed thus far for student data, the integration of all enterprise data will assist with decision making and budgetary planning.
- The myWSU pages will be made to provide mobile-friendly and streamlined access to the student self-service pages (Student Enrollment, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, Student Financials, Admissions and Campus Community). The Fluid user interface will also provide our WSU business offices with enhanced pages and features to deliver their services to students. This phase is expected to be completed in 2018.
- Implementation of Academic Performance Solutions platform. The EAB product is designed to empower academic and financial leaders with the department-specific performance and cost data—as well as reliable peer benchmarks—they need to make more effective decisions.
- The Enterprise Information Management (EIM) effort will structure and align all data and tools and platforms for analytic initiatives to improve decision making.
- WSU is deploying a university wide Data Governance Council that will improve predictive analytics, forecasting and modeling across multiple domains to facilitate more data-informed decisions.
For more information at WSU:
NWCCU standard reference: 2.G.5-8