A New Focus for Institutional Researchers: Developing and Using a Student Decision Support System. AIR 1998 Annual Forum Paper.

Institutional researchers play a key role in an environment where data warehouses are used to store and retrieve vast amounts of data. Along with the benefits of increased access for more users, improved reporting capabilities, and less reliance on centralized information, come questions of appropriate data usage, data access and security, training, and on-going support. This paper discusses the development of a student decision support system at a university and the role played by the institutional research staff. Following the successful implementation of a data warehouse serving an employee and financial decision support system, development of a student decision support system was begun in January 1996. The paper outlines each step in the process, beginning with the decision model for the data to be included and a brief description of the technology. The following sections discuss implementation of the system, which included determining who should have access, security guidelines, and training potential users. Also discussed are data usage, analysis and reporting, on-going support, the student steering committee, standard queries, data validation, other support services, and metadata. Issues still to be resolved include an issue log, adding new data, software upgrades, and who organizationally will be responsible for on-going maintenance and enhancements. A user survey is appended. (Contains 6 references.) (CH)