Data Governance Policy Models in Higher Education

Plaid led a research study and authored a report focused on policies and practices related to data governance in higher education.

Modern Data Stack at a Community College

Plaid helped a California Community College build a modern data stack: an automated data pipeline, data warehouse, and Tableau visualizations to help the College meet their enrolment and student access goals.

Forecasting System for a Medical School

Plaid built a medical resident forecasting system to help a Canadian medical school better project number of medical residents (doctors in training), training and teaching costs, and funding requirements from the provincial government. This project involved building an automated data pipeline and warehouse, a web interface (built by an internal team), and a forecasting tool that would allow users to create different growth scenarios for the medical school. The results are that this school is now able to more accurately forecast the number of residents within each program, and determine their training and payroll full-time equivalents to aid in academic, clinical, and financial planning.

Student Success Metrics at a Polytechnic

At many institutions, there are a number of programs and pathways that do not align nicely to the traditional first-time, full-time, four-year, undergraduate degree. This is especially true at colleges and polytechnics - where programs are designed to help students explore myriad career options in alignment with industry needs. From trades and apprenticeships, to programs that ladder (certificate -> diploma -> degree etc), traditional ERPs like Banner were not designed to measure this progression. Plaid helped this polytechnic design a workflow in FME and a series of metrics to help measure whether a student was retained in a program, laddered to another, graduated and continued, stopped out and returned later, and so on. These metrics were then incorporated into Tableau dashboards that are used by Dean's and Executives to inform program planning and budget allocation.

COVID-19 On-Campus Operations Analysis

During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Plaid helped a Canadian college to keep on top of evolving health-related requirements (such as room size limits). We created a Tableau dashboard that would allow stakeholders to understand how many students were in specific rooms, floors, buildings, and campuses at any given minute of the day relative to health department revised room capacities, and be able to adapt when necessary.

COVID-19 Grades Impact Analysis

Plaid helped a Canadian university analyze the effects of temporary grading policy changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis facilitates senior decision-makers at the university determine which policies and practices (different withdrawal deadlines, offering some portions or all classes online etc) could be helpful for a post-pandemic era.

Accreditation Reporting at a Polytechnic

Plaid helped a Canadian polytechnic's Engineering program visualize their accreditation reporting. For the first time, they are able to view their data on graduate attributes using Tableau Server, allowing the department's quality assurance coordinators to uncover grading issues and identify areas where additional submissions are needed.

Financial Reporting Modernization at a University

Plaid helped the Financial Services team at a western Canadian university modernize their financial and salary reporting. This involved creating a scalable data input framework leveraging Tableau Prep, building reports and analytics in Tableau Server, and deploying security to ensure that only specific users are allowed to view the data.

Tableau Training at a Canadian University

A Canadian public research university's Office of Institutional Research and Planning was looking to advance their team's Tableau skills to support strategic planning and decision making at the university. The scope of work included:

Student Success Factors at a University Business School

Plaid helped the Business school of a leading Canadian university uncover what factors impact time to graduation, major or concentration declaration, and course progression.

Central Data Warehouse Process Automation

In British Columbia, Canada, nearly all publicly-funded colleges, institutes, and universities are required to submit to the provincial government's Central Data Warehouse. Plaid is currently helping a college develop workflows and automations using FME Server. Replacing nearly 20-year old legacy scripts with a modern workflow in a low-code environment will allow the college to ensure their submissions are timely and accurate, with built-in error checking. The existing process takes longer than 24 hours to complete, negating the ability to do daily reporting for the college. The new process is expected to complete in substantially less time, ensuring the college can use their data to inform decision-making throughout the institution.