Academic Department Reporting

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Academic Department Reporting

• ReportNet User Group Presentation
• February 15, 2006
• Institutional Research Analysis

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Academic Department Reporting

• The ultimate goal of academic department
  reporting is to ensure that academic departments
  are efficiently and effectively using university
  resources in support of the institutions mission
  and strategic goals.

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Academic Department Reporting

• To determine if academic departments are
  efficiently and effectively using resources in
  support of the Universitys mission and strategic
  goals, reports are available in the following
  categories
• Strategic reports include multi-year trend
  analysis
• Management reports include information to allow
  for interim corrective action(s)
• List reports provide detailed data from which
  the management and strategic reports are derived
  often known as either audit, error or list
  reports

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Strategic Reporting

• Reporting begins at the strategic level with the
  key metrics that will be used. Why?
• Strategic decisions have the most profound and
  long lasting impact on the university as a whole.
  
• Strategic decisions come out of a review of the
  past, an evaluation of the present and a
  prediction about the future.
• Strategic reporting is iterative the more we
  know the more we need to know and the better
  equipped we are to predict the future.

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Strategic Reports

• Academic Department Reporting

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Strategic Reporting

• At present the following reports are available
  (or in final development) to determine if
  academic departments are efficiently and
  effectively using resources in support of the
  Universitys mission and strategic goals. The
  following reports are available (or in
  development)
• Tier Report
• Class Bin and Average Section Size
• Mini Institutional Cost Analysis

7
Management Reports

• Academic Department Reporting

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Management Reporting

• At present the following reports are available to
  identify to meet the institutional mission and
  strategic goals
• Tier Report
• Class Bin and Average Section Size
• Mini-Institutional Cost Analysis

9
List Reports

• Academic Department Reporting

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List Reporting

• At present the following reports are available
  (or in final development) to enable department
  staff to correct or update information used in
  management and strategic reports
• Active schedule reports
• Faculty load
• Faculty list
• Student list
• SROT distribution schedule and processing status

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Difficulties Encountered

• What is an academic department?
• Who is the department chair?
• Which college is the department assigned to?
• Most of the academic departments (as assigned in
  the Student Module in Banner) dont exist in the
  Finance or Human Resource modules.

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Difficulties Encountered

• Missing data
• We didnt know we needed to enter it to use the
  system effectively
• It wasnt clear who should enter the data
• In many cases the data entry staff dont know
  what data to enter and when to enter it
• No audit reports to catch missing data
• Historical data doesnt exist we didnt bring
  it with us

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Difficulties Encountered

• Inconsistent measures in departments
• Training for report consumers at all levels
  deans, department chairs, faculty and
  administrative staff on Banner, ReportNet, MS
  Office, understanding and interpreting the
  information presented
• Lack of common definitions
• Institutional tendency to write around bad data
  rather than eradicating it
• Mac vs PC

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Opportunities Encountered

• Write once run many. Provides consistent
  report results across all departments.
• Satisfaction departments can see the results of
  their data entry the next day.
• Meets the demand department chairs by and large
  have been clamoring for this information.
• Availability ReportNet makes information
  available to authenticated users wherever they
  can access a web browser.

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Opportunities Encountered

• Spend time where it needs to be spent
• Strategic reporting should take at least 50 of
  your time 70 is probably more realistic.
• Management reporting should not take more than
  25 of your time
• List/audit/error reporting should not take more
  than 10 of your time.
• Change your paradigm from measuring by number of
  users to measuring by the impact of the decision.

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Opportunities Encountered

• Remember that reporting is iterative. If nothing
  has changed
• Expect to revisit all strategic reports once a
  year
• Expect to revisit all management reports more
  frequently (usually to match the business unit
  cycle)
• Expect to revisit all list/audit/error reports
  based on any changes to management or strategic
  reports

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And finally..

• Think of your reports as inventory audit them
  find out who is using them, how often they use
  them, when they are (or are not) using them, or
  if there are any noticeable performance issues
  (related to time of day or which data source(s)
  you use).