8 Things Your Staff Could Be Doing Instead of Chasing Last Day of Attendance
Your staff brings more strategic value to your school when they have the data they need the moment they need it.
Wallet? ✓
Phone? ✓
Keys…? Missing again.
They should be right where you left them. It’s the same place you always leave them. But somehow, they end up across the room, left in your pockets, or who knows where.
The same goes for a student’s last day of attendance (LDA).
Stick with us on this, especially if you have multiple learning environments (online, onground, and externship). LDA should be updated in your SIS, but are you confident it’s accurate? Or is the true LDA still stuck in the LMS or on an externship spreadsheet?
More often than not, staff spends so much time searching for student data that they don’t have the time to act on it. Common struggles in LDA determination are:
- Delayed data from instructors (online and on-ground)
- Data silos, causing financial aid to be unsure whether or not the LDA in the SIS is the true LDA
- Late confirmation from externship sites
But it’s 2023. We have trackers that allow you to find your keys with the touch of a button on your smartphone. LDA is no different.
New tools tackle data challenges head-on by automating student attendance and engagement data, giving your team more time to spend on higher-value tasks.
Here are eight things instructors and staff could do instead of managing LDA data:
1. Coach students
52% of instructors say they want to spend most of their time coaching students, but only 21% are currently spending most of their time coaching students.
At many schools, instructors are tasked with attendance and grade management. While it may seem like a small burden, the time they spend on data entry adds up. Automating grades, attendance, and other student data from the classroom/LMS into the SIS frees up valuable instructor hours, giving them more time to focus on what they love.
This is particularly important for adjunct instructors who aren’t onsite/online every day. You want them to spend most of their time doing what you pay them for: Teach. Plus, if they’re only doing data entry once every few days, your full-time staff may not get the LDA data they need to catch an at-risk student.
2. Prepare for audits
Some registrars have literally piles and piles of papers that need to be managed for audits, but they’re so bogged down chasing instructors and students for data that they don’t have time to manage it.
When you automate data collection and management, registrars can finally tackle that paperwork pile to get your records audit-ready and keep them that way.
3. Intervene with at-risk students
Instead of entering data, pulling reports, and discussing reports, staff can identify at-risk students with a glance and act fast to get them back on track.
Plus, with grades, attendance, and other risk factors in one place, staff gains a better understanding of why students are at-risk without having to dig through other data.
4. Think strategically
Data management can easily feel like a hamster wheel. Students are showing up to class every day (at least they should be), creating more data, and adding more to your staff’s plate.
Even schools that have already automated some processes still have some level of manual management, whether it’s reporting or data transfers. But 85% of staff members think they could do their jobs better without manual data entry, and 84% say work like manual data entry keeps them from meeting their goals.
When staff spends less time managing data, they have time to actually analyze it and think strategically about student success, school growth, and operations.
For example, leaders can spot trends in data to determine where/why students frequently drop and put guardrails in place to keep them on track.
5. Enjoy each other's company
No, seriously.
Do you want to work with a bunch of people you don’t really know or enjoy?
When you like your colleagues, it improves morale. And at a time when schools cite staff turnover as a greater challenge than student turnover, morale is critical.
Tension between departments can negatively impact morale. When finance teams are stuck nagging the academics team for LDA, SAP, and other data, they feel like the bad guys. In turn, academic teams get frustrated that they have to be the middleman between finance and instructors.
All in all, it’s a painful process that could easily be solved with a little automation.
6. Expedite Title IV processes
Let’s talk more about your finance team.
If they’re searching for data, then they can’t actually do their full job. In fact, 57% of career schools don’t have the data to manage Title IV funding as quickly as they need to.
Automating your processes ensures that your finance team has the data they need the moment they need it for Title IV processes. In turn, this protects your school from hefty fees and findings.
7. Take a vacation
You shouldn’t have to worry that something will slip through the cracks just because the employee who manages it is out of the office. Sure, everyone does their best to ensure continuity when they’re out, but if they’re the sole person responsible for a report or a type of data, there is always a chance that something will slip through the cracks.
When you have strong, automated processes to manage your data, your staff can take their well-deserved time off without processes falling apart.
8. Build strategic relationships
Just like repeatedly pinging other departments for data verification, pinging externship sites to confirm student attendance puts a strain on the relationship between your school and the site. It transforms what should be a strategic relationship into a transactional one.
Automating externship attendance allows externship coordinators to take a more strategic role. Instead of scrambling for student data, they can build strong relationships with externship sites and better evaluate externship experiences to ensure student success.
Automating LDA and data collection with CourseKey
CourseKey automatically collects and transfers attendance data from every learning environment—online, onground, and externship—into the student information system.
Staff gain a holistic, real-time view of the student journey in an instant. They have the information they need to succeed and enjoy their positions, ultimately improving operations and morale.
Request a demo to learn more about how CourseKey helps over 300+ across the country improve operations, strategic growth, and more.
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