The Secret to Pain-Free Audits for Career Colleges
How cloud storage and attendance automation simplify career college audits and improve compliance.
Career college administrators are meticulous in their data-keeping. They take attendance lists, check them twice, and input data from hard copies into a student information system (SIS). When an instructor turns in a student’s makeup time two weeks later, admins must update the student’s profile in the SIS and record the adjustment, all in preparation for the day an auditor walks through the door.
Even for seasoned career college administrators, an audit is never fun. Historically, audits involved pulling box after box of paper attendance records to prove that students earned hours in class, independently, in a clinical lab, or at an externship, learning the skills they need to succeed in their field. While SISs have made the process smoother, they don’t provide significant insights beyond the student’s total time and still rely on manual data entry that must be validated with paper records.
The secret to pain-free audits? Transitioning from paper records and manual data entry to digital attendance technology with cloud-based storage. A digital process makes it easier for administrators to locate records and provides auditors with insights into how students earned time, ensuring career colleges remain compliant with accreditors and Title IV.
Automating attendance for audit-ready data
Every day, administrators face the daunting task of entering hour after hour of student time, including synchronous, asynchronous, off-site, and makeup time. Manual data entry is, at best, time-consuming and, at worst, prone to human error. Failure to provide auditors with accurate student data can jeopardize a school’s Title IV funding, and human error simply cannot be an option when funding is on the line.
Digital attendance solutions, like CourseKey Attend, help career colleges track attendance in real-time and automatically transfer data into the SIS, ensuring that student records are accurate and verifiable down to the second.
With digital attendance tracking, career colleges can easily provide additional insights into how and when students accrued time and prove that students are maintaining satisfactory academic progress. CourseKey Attend breaks down every student’s synchronous, asynchronous, missed, and makeup time into one clear dashboard. It shows when and where students completed each block of time, verifying their identity through secure attendance technology.
The best part? These accurate, verifiable records are available with just a few clicks of a mouse.
Find the record you need when you need it
With paper-based attendance management, different records that influence students’ total time awarded like make-up time, asynchronous work, and externship attendance are all recorded on separate paper documents stored in separate locations.
When that’s the case, audits require digging through dusty storage rooms, searching for form after form to prove that SIS data is accurate. Searching even the best-kept paper records is a pain, plus paper records are expensive to maintain and susceptible to damage—not to mention the papercuts!
Cloud-based records storage makes student information easily accessible with just the click of a button while protecting records (and fingers) from damage. CourseKey gives administrators easy access to detailed, verifiable records in a matter of seconds. If an auditor asks for a sampling of student or program records, administrators can export the information without leaving their desks.
Catch compliance issues before they happen
With digital, cloud-based records, the days of scrambling in preparation for an audit are over. Instead, career college administrators can take a proactive approach to audits and compliance. Leaders have real-time visibility into data across all learning environments, gaining the behavioral insights needed to identify and address potential compliance issues before audits happen. For example, if a leader finds that an instructor is consistently beginning a class early or ending late, they can connect with the instructor early and establish a solution.
Increased visibility allows compliance leaders to take a proactive, not reactive, approach to compliance
Simplify audits and take the pain out of career college compliance
Using a digital attendance solution with convenient cloud-based storage will better position career colleges for pain-free audits, protecting Title IV funds while saving administrators time and frustration.
If you’re interested in learning more about how CourseKey can help your school with pain-free audits, request a demo below to learn more.
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