With wNET we ve got a system that captures data at source. It s accurate, and its economical. There s no duplication - and no delay. One impact is that staff now have much higher expectations of the information being provided to them. They expect it to be accurate.
Paper based systems are always out of date.
When they started to focus on Colleges at the end of 1993, things began to move very quickly. Within the College we now have all staff using the computer folders, and electronic data capture is just commonplace. The outputs are timely and reliable. We re now more aware of, and more responsive when a student starts skipping classes, as this is usually the first sign of a student falling behind in course work. We are even getting students informing us in advance if they are not able to get to a class when there s a good reason, because they know it s being tracked and they will be chased up.