Haywood Community College

Haywood Community College Uses IntelliBoard Pro to Build Crucial Census Reports

Located in the mountains of Western North Carolina in the small town of Clyde, Haywood Community College (HCC) has taken pride in promoting lifelong student learning and success in Haywood County since its founding in 1965.

A North Carolina Community College System member, HCC was named one of the top ten community colleges in the US in 2022 by SmartAsset. With over 50% of its courses online in some capacity and seven associate degrees, three diplomas, and 15 certificate programs offered fully online, HCC meets its more than 1700 students where they are on their educational paths.

HCC's Challenge

Higher education institutions like HCC are required by the Federal Government to take a “snapshot” of all student enrollment. That snapshot then becomes the official enrollment figures used for state and federal reporting and financial aid eligibility. This practice is often simply referred to as the 10% point, or “census” – and in HCC’s case, a named census activity built into every course section.

The census is a huge, non-negotiable responsibility from an auditing perspective. If a student doesn’t make the census, they don’t get counted; if they don’t, the institution loses the FTE dollars associated with that student.

For over 25 years, HCC has collected census data through their “HOP (Haywood Online Participation) enrollment activity” – a brief 5-question attestation that a student must complete for each course in which they are enrolled to gain access to that course’s content. The named census activity exists in every course’s LMS component. Once HCC made the census activity a specific named activity, they were able to promote its use across departments, and it has become part of the College’s lexicon.

How the results of those HOP assignments are retrieved and compiled has changed over the years:

At first, their departmental assistants went in and pulled from every class, then sent it to the coordinator of instructional support who works in the VP of Instruction’s office. Then they did it where the VP of Instruction could pull them in bulk. That wasn’t a terrible system, but they still had to go in and download all the data and then save it somewhere.

They needed a solution that was simpler and less time-consuming.

Building a Successful Learning Solution

When HCC transitioned to their registrar being responsible for the HOP reports, they realized that doing it through IntelliBoard would be a lot easier and simpler.

Individually downloading each course’s HOP data from the native reporting inside HCC’s LMS with no outside support was no small feat. Instead, the IntelliBoard Learning Analytics Platform was an out-of-the-box solution that could quickly compile all of HCC’s HOP data into easy-to-read reports on demand.

Delivering Impact

Now that HCC could easily find and compile HOP-specific reports through IntelliBoard and pull them on demand, the responsibility was completely transferred to HCC’s registrar office.

Using IntelliBoard allows the registrar to pull data whenever needed. The IntelliBoard Learning Analytics Platform also gives them agency over the data that they need.

Having agency over crucial data is empowering as well as a huge time saver. Giving the registrar the autonomy to pull the HOP reports with IntelliBoard also meant less administrative burden on instructors. They could simply include information on how instructors could remind students to fill out their HOP assignments in the census enrollment packet given to the faculty without adding more strenuous administrative tasks to their plates.

Building a Long-Term, Strategic Partnership

HCC has big plans for rolling out more of IntelliBoard’s capabilities. At the moment, they don’t have their faculty looking at IntelliBoard, only their registrar office. Their next step will include pulling data for program managers and deans and configuring some reports that will be extremely useful for them.