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Community Colleges and Technology >> Getting the Edge on Institutional Goals
3/31/2005
“With its ability to integrate data from previously stove-piped applications, combined with its rapid development framework and user friendliness, SAP BI has given us a powerful management tool,” says Tortorice. “The on-demand reporting enabled by SAP NetWeaver has substantially improved management control over the organization.”
Users get on board; improvements surface. Although HCM will not be fully live until July, there has been immediate and substantial improvement in the use and acceptance of the ERP solution at LACCD. The access to financial reports—specifically, the Budget Availability Report—has created a “truth-in-spending” culture. With two clicks, users can access the system rapidly and drill down to detail quickly. That means, says Tortorice, that error detection and correction now happen much faster than was previously possible. What’s more, he adds, users can drill down to specific transactions and analyze them without having to traverse the entire system. And because the presentation layer is entirely Web-based, reports can be peeled off and distributed faster than ever before.
But man d'es not live by reports—or technology improvements—alone. People and process change carry their own impact. “The installation of mySAP ERP HCM and the go-live later this year is a major exercise in organizational change management,” says Tortorice. “But that change would not be possible were it not for a slow and deliberate approach taken toward change—after, of course, the initial resistance from our users.”
ePortfolios at Surry CC: Documenting Learning Outcomes
Surry Community College (NC) is a growing institution with approximately 4,500 curriculum students each year and more than 9,000 area residents taking one or more continuing education classes each year. Over the past two years, full-time enrollment has increased 16.5 percent.
By way of differentiation and distinction, Surry has positioned itself as a “learning college,” and has developed the Surry Community College Learning Initiative with the goal of fostering the development of a true learning-centered community college. Surry, in fact, is actively cultivating a culture in which policies, programs, and personnel all support learning as the major priority. Three objectives provide the framework for this goal: Improve student engagement through critical thinking, assess learning outcomes, and reform the campus culture. Not surprisingly, technology has played a key role in the objectives, and notably, in the assessment of learning outcomes.
Assessment via portfolio. The college created learning outcomes relevant for all degree programs and chose as their assessment process the Institutional Portfolio model developed and piloted by Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS (www.jccc.net/ home/depts/6111/site/assmnt/cogout). Via this model, attainment of learning outcomes is documented through the use of individual ePortfolios created by Surry students using the Blackboard Learning and Content Management Systems (
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