Five Essential Pieces of DL Admin Data

I have to admit - collecting data or even analyzing data is not my favorite part of my job. I have our data collection split up among various staff members, and in theory, we try to keep these updated weekly so that we don't have to scramble when asked for information. If you don't keep up with anything else, there are five pieces of data you really need to have for a DL program. These will help you with strategic planning, accreditation reports, justifying new resources, and more.

1. Number of students enrolled in distance and online courses per semester. We define distance courses as those offered more than 50 percent online; and online courses as those offered more than 95 percent online.
2. Student retention in distance and online courses. What overall percentage completed these courses? How does this compare to your traditional courses? Are you improving in this area? Related to this is data comparing passing and fail rates.
3. Student satisfaction with online courses. Usually obtained from course surveys. We also use annual telephone surveys and focus groups.
4. Faculty and student satisfaction with support services. We track all email, telephone, and f2f requests for assistance in Remedy software. Each caller is sent, by email, a brief evaluation of the services they received.
5. Faculty course improvements based on evaluation results. Each faculty member completes a brief form summarizing their evaluation results, and how they will use this information to make course improvements. We keep the individual ones on file; and compile a summary which can be used to also make adjustments to our training programs. This makes accreditors happy.