Lakeshore Technical College Upgrades to Blue to Automate Course Evaluation Process

Montreal, Canada – January 27, 2017 – Lakeshore Technical College (LTC) has switched to Blue in order to improve response rates in course evaluations, enhance reporting capabilities, and provide faster turnover of results to faculty.

“We were strongly in need of a system which will assist in automating most of the workflows involved with the course evaluation process,” comments Cheryl Terp, Quality & Continuous Improvement Manager, Lakeshore Technical College. “We have no internal technical support representative and inadequate external customer support for our current survey system. Explorance has a proven track record of excellence in the delivery of professional services and 24/7 customer and technical support.”

With the Blue system in place, administrators at LTC can easily set-up, execute, and report on course evaluations with minimal technical effort. “Explorance is the only vendor that offers the level of flexibility, richness in features and capabilities, as well as caliber of integration with our back-end Student Information System (PeopleSoft) and front-end Learning Management System (Blackboard Learn™),” Cheryl adds. Blue will use the data directly from PeopleSoft to natively synchronize course information (dates, duration, enrollment relationships, etc.) for a smarter evaluation process. Integration points in Blackboard Learn will create a streamlined end-to-end user experience where students can view, access, and complete forms without leaving the portal.

“Several members of faculty have demonstrated issues in regards to the reports generated from our current tool. Namely, faculty have expressed that the turnover of results is painstakingly long, making it difficult to implement positive changes in the classroom in a timely manner,” Cheryl continues. Leveraging Blue’s powerful reporting engine and integration function, LTC can easily generate rich reports based on student demographics within minutes. “Furthermore, faculty have expressed that the analytical reports and results produced [with the current tool] are incomprehensive and very hard to read or interpret.” With Blue, stakeholders at the college can have customized reports delivered to their inbox in the format that meets their requirements for deeper analysis.

Cheryl also remarks that “low response rates have the effect of generating a myriad of issues pertaining to the validity and credibility of our reporting results and our ability to gain insights into areas that will affect overall institutional effectiveness and improvement.” Now Blue users at LTC can monitor student response rates in real-time during the course evaluation period. Stakeholders are able to view the overall status of projects, detailed demographic breakdowns, and see where responses are coming from (by device, browser, and location). By examining how each access point is converting, administrators will be able to adjust their course evaluation strategy mid-stream to increase participation.

Located in Cleveland, Wisconsin, LTC is a member of the Wisconsin Technical College System – 16 public technical colleges offering more than 300 programs. Serving over 11,342 enrolled students, the college’s academic menu includes 100 career programs, customized training for business and industry, continuing education for personal and professional enrichment, and basic skills education.