Member Article

Croydon College to enhance reporting with Advanced’s software

Croydon College has gone live with a new student and management information system (MIS) from Advanced as part of an integrated suite of software to provide enhanced reporting and centralised data. The College went live with ProSolution earlier this year and will be fully integrated with existing software by the start of the 2016/17 academic year.

Croydon College offers a range of vocational and academic qualifications, apprenticeships and courses to 5,000 students every year. Based on one site the College has 500 employees and includes a Higher Education (HE) campus which delivers courses in conjunction with the University of Sussex, as well as a dedicated School of Art.

Advanced was chosen from a shortlist of three providers due to the solution’s cost-effectiveness and the ability to seamlessly integrate with other Advanced software.

The College also uses ProAchieve, for analysing student retention and success, ProMonitor, for student monitoring, ProObserve, for lesson observations, and ProPortal, to give students access to their records.

The MIS acts as a central repository for college data including applications, enrolments, timetables and registers, enabling MIS staff to create reports at any level to support informed decision-making. The solution also supports the continued growth of the College’s HE provision by enabling HE and further education information to be stored in the same place for the first time.

Richer functionality also enables staff more space to record all the Additional Learning Support (ALS) information they need, such as exam support and the needs of blind or deaf students.

Lesley Fooks, Director of MIS, Croydon College, says, “ProSolution has really streamlined the reporting process, enabling our MIS team to access data and generate reports whenever they need to. Previously they would not have been able to do this themselves, so it’s really made their lives easier.

“We also anticipate further efficiencies as we integrate all the Advanced solutions over the coming months. With all our information in one place we can simply and quickly analyse data to effectively manage the College to give our learners the best outcome possible.”

ProMonitor went live in 2014 and is used by all staff for an end-to-end view of each student’s activities, including attendance and comments about academic and extra-curricular performance. This enables teachers and managers to easily track students against their Individual Learning Plan (ILP). Students can also access the system and update their record, empowering them to take ownership of their learning.

ProAchieve has been in place for more than a decade and is used by Department Heads to monitor achievement and retention rates at any level – student, course or college – to ensure the college is reaching its targets. ProObserve was implemented 18 months ago to replace spreadsheets with an online, standardised way of managing lesson observations.

Fooks adds, “Implementing integrated systems from one supplier is a simple way to deliver the efficiencies that all colleges are seeking. Utilising this focused technology and working with specialist partners like Advanced enables us to monitor and track students’ activity and deliver the quality education they deserve.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .