Background
Sinclair Community College’s Work-Based Learning office connects students with internships, apprenticeships, and pre-apprenticeships while also tracking and supporting other work-based learning experiences across the college. Through this program, they are able to bridge the gaps between high schools, post-secondary education, and the job market. Their goals include supporting students in their education and career readiness by gathering opportunities for them, ensuring that the programs align with industry needs, and providing spaces for hands-on experience. They achieve this through collaboration with employers, faculty, and staff throughout the region, providing a wide-range of valuable opportunities.
Challenges
With a wide range of programs offered and a host of different actors involved with each, the amount and variety of data that Sinclair manages is vast. In addition, all of these variables must be intricately documented and able to communicate across data sets with each other. This was complicated by the existence of differing data sets and systems used across the program, which prevented easy communication between teams. This created barriers in the process that were time consuming and took away focus from the core goals of the office.
When managing internships and apprenticeship programs, a large number of factors must be tracked with high levels of documentation. Due to this, a high level of consistency in the tracking and communication of the data was necessary in terms of data reporting and analysis. This challenged the system that Sinclair was previously using, as there was a lack of precise tracking of student data which hindered the ability to scale up the program to reach more students.
Solution
With Grouptrail, Sinclair now has a reliable database that can track student, employer, and program information in a singular location that is accessible to staff of different roles. The centralization of this information has allowed for much greater efficiency in terms of reporting - now, through a simple function Sinclair is able to export reports of their data instantaneously. This has drastically improved their ability to evaluate their work and find the best ways to support their students.
The centralization has also opened up much clearer communication across teams. No longer must they access and report to different systems - Grouptrail has created a space where data can be accessed by each party in a shared location. The improvements in communication and reporting have allowed the team to communicate their objectives and actions in a timely fashion, both internally and externally. Grouptrail has streamlined the process, helping Sinclair accomplish all of its vital tasks at a level of efficiency and clarity that was previously unreachable.
Benefits
With these tracking, reporting, and communication functions simplified by Grouptrail, Sinclair is now better situated to put greater focus on supporting students and scaling the opportunities provided to them.
These changes have been significant, and a learning curve is natural. Throughout the implementation of these crucial improvements, ECMC Expansion Grant Program Manager for Sinclair’s WBL Office, Treva Wynn, stated that, “… the client support from Grouptrail has been exceptional. Their team has been patient, flexible, and genuinely excited to help us at every step of the process. Their responsiveness and willingness to adapt the platform to our needs have made implementation much smoother, and we appreciate their commitment to our success.”