ACCUDEMIA USERÂ SPOTLIGHT
Ann McCalley and Sofia Hernandez from the Community College of Denver were our Accudemia User Spotlight guests for the month of June. They talked about the huge impact that Accudemia has made on their data collection efforts, and their ability to use that data effectively. Watch their full discussion here or read on to learn how they found success, and what tips they have for other academic support centers.
The EXCEL! Zone Tutoring Center began using Accudemia when they discovered a need for a product that would support their decentralized support model, which includes math, physics, ESL, writing, academic coaching, and digital literacy. The main problem that Accudemia helped them solve was moving to a centralized format, free of clunky pencil and paper tracking. They needed to better track what went on during their tutoring and support sessions. Collecting this data was especially important because it was tied to the funding for their department. This data included not just quantitative data (student names, sign-in times, etc), but qualitative data such as a tutor’s assessment of the visit. They collect this data through a Session Assessment, one of the features available to Accudemia subscribers.
At the end of each meeting with a student, the tutor fills out the Assessment, which asks questions such as the specific skills being worked on, the type of support the student needs, and whether the tutor believes the student will need additional help with this particular struggle. The center works with Institutional Research to develop this questionnaire and determine what to report to the state, which can help them secure more funding for their center. Working with IR, as the EXCEL! Zone demonstrates, can be a great way to refine and optimize your center’s data collection efforts. They have also found that asking tutors these questions aids with the tutors’ development in their roles.
All of this data collection has shown them some important information about the readiness levels of their students to tackle the basic skills required of the general education classes they typically receive assistance for. These gaps that need to be addressed by tutors during Zone sessions have broad implications for how they communicate with other departments and faculty and enable them to work together better to get students up to speed and close those gaps. They credit these discoveries with the intuitiveness and flexibility of the Accudemia system, which allows them to get the intel and funding that they need to be successful and valuable for students.
Using Accudemia has had additional implications and impacts both in and out of their center’s scope. Ann reported that they share the data at conferences and with other schools in their system. Data from Accudemia allowed them to show the effectiveness of their center and its positive impact on student success, which saved them from shutting down in 2020.
Ann and Sofia’s presentation illustrates the vast importance of collecting and reporting on your center’s data, and how much easier the process is with a tool like Accudemia. If you’re not collecting data with Accudemia and want to learn more about the benefits, contact us today!
Join us next time
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Accudemia User Spotlight segment recap for 6/14/2022. Held Tuesdays at 1 pm EST (weekly during the academic year, and monthly during the summer), Accudemia clients can join a session to learn about a quick, useful topic from one of our Support Specialists. Â We hope that these examples help you to ponder how you might utilize Accudemia and other innovations in your own center. Check the page about our Weekly Accudemia Session to find out more about our next session and for more ideas about helping our students achieve success!
