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IMPROVING
CONTROL AND CASHFLOW: HOW TOKAM IS PAYING DIVIDENDS AT STEVENSON
COLLEGE EDINBURGH
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Student attendance capture and reporting
Stevenson
College Edinburgh - www.stevenson.ac.uk - is the fifth largest
college in Scotland and one of the largest further education
institutions in the country. It has over 15,000 students,
including more than 2,000 full-time, taking a wide range of
courses from accounting to social care - and everything in
between.
Stevenson
College Edinburgh (SCE) has a strong reputation for access
to higher education and widening participation, with a third
of students studying at Higher National Certificate or professional
levels. Building on its reputation for inclusiveness, the
College was chosen to host the BRITE (Beattie Resources for
Inclusiveness in Technology and Education) Initiative - www.brite.ac.uk.
This national centre is the realisation of one of the main
recommendations of the Beattie Report - www.scotland.gov.uk
- and serves the FE sector throughout Scotland.
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Full-time, part-time, evening, open and distance-learning
courses are geared to a variety of levels from
Access to HND. In addition to an academic body
of 350 lecturers, there are a further 200 support
staff. Annual turnover is around £20 million
meaning that the financial discipline and business
processes essential in corporate business are
just as necessary on campus. With funding closely
linked to student outcome and attendance, monitoring
and managing attendance is crucial.
"Student attendance
monitoring has always been an important issue."
says SCE business process manager Ronnie Peacock.
"Often a requirement
for student funding, it is essential that we have
the facts and figures at our fingertips. Student
dropout is a potential waste of both College resources
and the students' investment in learning, and
spotting the early signs of irregular attendance
is a sure way of addressing these issues."
"We had been aware
of the need to improve the process for some time,
but what finally prompted us to act was the introduction
of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) -
www.emascotland.com." EMAs are
being rolled out across Scotland to provide financial
support to young people from low-income families,
and by 2007-08, all eligible 16 to 19 year olds
who undertake a full-time course at school or
college will receive an EMA.
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"We are now able to provide
fully audited records on a weekly basis. Whereas our
previous process of monitoring attendance was just not
good enough, TokAM was straightforward to implement,
easy to use, is robust and provides all the information
we need to satisfy the EMA audit requirements, as well
as enabling us to get a firm grip on attendance for
our own internal management."
"We had utilised a reactive
system of attendance monitoring, where we applied funds
unless we had received data from tutors to indicate
otherwise. Essentially, it was too ad hoc and there
were difficulties in confirming records or extracting
information for analysis that would help identify problem
areas. Now, the situation is reversed, where the Student
Support section identifies students who will not be
paid unless the tutors report successful intervention
and guidance. As a result, we are more proactive in
the use of attendance data for student guidance and
for fund payments."
"TokAM has provided much
better financial control in administering bursary and
hardship funds, which are also attendance-based, and
has had a major impact on cash flow control. Over the
first six months we had cash flow improvements of around
£60,000. All the saved cash goes back into student
retention systems and focuses the money where it is
needed most - to students who need it and who want to
attend. At more than one level, TokAM has paid for itself
in the first 12 months of use."
Why Tokairo's TokAM system? "My
previous job was information systems manager at another
Scottish further education institute, where I had selected
the system from a number of alternative options and
successfully piloted it in a campus of over 4000 students.
On the basis of that experience we identified it as
the best solution and chose it for Stevenson College
Edinburgh."
TokAM enforces tight security and accuracy when attendance
data is entered and offers a wide range of register
capture methods - for example, paper-based registers
using OCR techniques, direct data entry for tutors'
networked laptops and Web registers where attendance
data can be entered over the Internet of a college Intranet.
"At SCE, our former system
used an ineffective and centralised scan and data entry
system. Every register had to be physically transported
from locations throughout the college to the scanning
office, scanned and then returned. This was time-consuming
- and there was the risk of losing the registers. Now,
we make use of existing networked scanners and photocopiers.
A paper register never has to leave the originating
faculty office and the whole process of printing and
distributing registers is done locally. A particular
feature we like is the fact that TokAM doesn't reject
scanned pages where, previously, we often had to reprocess
input."
The system tightly integrates with all the different
college systems, including SITS, Unit-e, Fretwell-Downing
EBS, MicroCompass QLS, Eclipse, Campus IT and Mondas.
Features include highly efficient data capture and ability
to quickly report on attendance which enables colleges
to proactively support their students.
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"Our own design
for importing student, subject and timetable data
between our Student Records systems (SITS\Dolphin)
and TokAM has also been a great success. We now
import strangers and withdrawals to Dolphin, re-exporting
them to clear the strangers list and removing
the need for separate operational routines. We
have been able to quickly identify students who
are attending classes but have not yet completed
the enrolment process as well as providing reports
to course leaders on enrolled students who do
not appear on any registers."
"We had also used
automated routines in our student records system
[SITS \ Dolphin] to transfer data to our subject
registration and resulting processes. This caused
problems with duplicate registrations and had
difficulties in situations where students received
integrated learning, over multiple subjects, in
the same class. Now, we have closed that interface
and, instead, run prepared reports from TokAM
that are checked and verified by tutors themselves,
providing much cleaner and more accurate data
for our own use and, importantly, for certificate-awarding
bodies."
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Widely used by colleges throughout the UK, TokAM's
reporting addresses the increasing demands from tutors,
sponsors and the Government who request monthly, weekly,
even daily attendance data and reports. It is the least
expensive and most flexible system available for efficiently
capturing attendance data and quickly responds to and
delivers all Government, LSC, college management, administration
and tutor report demands.
Flexible reporting can be configured using a wide range
of criteria and reports can be saved for re-use and
even shared with other users. There is also full compliance
with the Freedom of Information and Data Protection
acts using the TokAM DM Integration Module and TokOpen
document management system.
"We
piloted it in June last year and it has been running
for the whole of this academic year. Support from Tokairo
has always been fast and effective and introducing the
system to college staff has been straightforward. For
example, there's a one-hour in-house training session
[for the reporting module] before we let staff loose
on it for real. So far about half of all academic and
support staff have been covered this way."
"The TokAM Reporting
Module is now distributed on every desktop, guidance
tutors have full access to reports and can even see
individual register images, replicas of the register
taken on the day. We now get very fast turnaround of
attendance data from paper to desktop, comprehensive
information on room utilisation and, because it is extremely
guidance-oriented, we can get the data to the relevant
tutors much more quickly."
"I've had very positive
feedback from the use of the system - from teaching
staff to senior management and I've been able to show
excellent cash flow control in bursaries and other funds
that utilise attendance data. Any teething problems
have all had to do with operational issues rather than
anything to do with the actual software. The system
enables us to dig deeper into the bald statistics and
has resulted in a number of positive changes to our
operating procedures, including subject registration
and student retention."
"All in all, my expectations
of the system were certainly met and those of others
in the College exceeded. The bottom line is that, from
individual attendances to full college statistics, we
have better information for student tutors and counsellors,
better and more accurate data for financial and payment
systems, and better management information. The benefits
flow throughout the whole monitoring and management
processes."
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