Saddleback College Athletes Scoreboard: A case study on cohort tracking in a Community College

Presentation Summary

Tony Lipold - South Orange County Community College District, Denice Inciong, Director of Research and Planning and Nicole Ortega, Research Analyst

Data Warehouse Tracking and reporting on specific cohorts of students was a challenge in our District’s inFORM Data Warehouse. Our Athletic Director wanted to monitor and evaluate his intercollegiate athletic program but no tracking mechanism to identify athletes existed. The Athletic department manually kept detailed spreadsheets on the athletes’ eligibility and progress and they were not able to easily conduct any longitudinal analysis on their student athletes. Using the inFORM Data Warehouse we created a process that tracked the students. Data cubes were built to measure student retention, GPA, success and retention rates, and transfers. Our Athlete Dashboard (called Scoreboard) visually displays this information quickly to the AD and his coaches. The Athletic Director uses this information to monitor athletes’ eligibility requirements, help his coaches monitor player’s academic performance, and measure his athletes’ transfer rate. It has been very successful in illustrating to the college community that athletes are productive and successful students who contribute to the overall college success. Additionally, this information is used to advocate for athletic programs in a time of budget cuts across the state of California. inFORM is built on a Microsoft Platform; stored in SQL databases, reports built with Reporting Services, and delivered through a SharePoint portal page.