The IPEDS Fall Collection for 2009, which started on September 2, will close October 14th. We wanted to remind our customers that they can use Populi to finish the Completions and 12-Month Enrollment reports. You’ll find it in Preset Reports in Academics, and after a few clicks, the hard part will be over.
Next, you’ll need to log in to IPEDS and copy-and-paste the data into the appropriate (more…)
We hash it. Next question?
Well, what’s hashing?
Hashing a password involves shoving it through a one-way algorithm that makes it incomprehensible and indecipherable. Here’s what happens: (more…)
Isaac Grauke, our CEO, and Janet Sellars, our Business Development rep, are en route to Philadelphia, PA for the National League for Nursing Education Summit 2009. They’ll be in Booth 217 in the exhibitor space, and when they’re not showing off Populi (and our new online learning features), Isaac was hoping to tuck into a cheesesteak or three. Our CEO digs those peppers and onions.
The Summit covers, as you might imagine, issues in nursing education, an enterprise in which are engaged institutions like community colleges, hospitals, and medical schools, as well as a considerable number of smaller, dedicated nursing colleges. Distance education, accreditation, and national competency standards are among the interlocking issues nursing educators have to contend with nowadays.
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Populi, being a Student Information System and Learner Management System in one, is a great fit for nursing colleges. Online learning delivers your courses to all your students, near and far, while numerous information and reporting tools improve any school’s institutional effectiveness. If you’re at the Summit, come meet Isaac and Janet at Booth 217 (and if not, have a look around here and see if you’d like a demo).
The Populi development team put in some overtime last night, taking the application down for about nine minutes in the wee, wee hours to release the newest update.
You probably noticed when you first logged in: we have a new look for our login screen. Beyond that, we improved course cloning—now the instructor can clone courses, and can clone different elements from different terms (as in, “this term’s assignments and that term’s reading list”). There’s a new option to show by-degree GPA’s on transcripts, should your school need it (just contact us to flip that switch). And under the hood, an across-the-board speed increase in how we deliver pages to your browser; this will really help our users when they have to use a slower internet connection.
Oh, and one more thing… (more…)
When we bring on a new college, we import their databases into Populi. And during the data import, we get a good look at what the college staff has had to deal with for the last few years. Grade reports and transcripts with different grades for the same course. Incorrectly-calculated GPAs. A student’s name misspelled four different ways. And any number of other basic information problems.
It reminds us why we got into this business in the first place (more…)
Although this Campus Technology article has somewhat larger institutions in view, it’s a pretty good summary of the benefits that web-based software like Populi brings to small colleges. The only thing “off-note” it strikes is the title: “IT on Demand: The Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing in Higher Education”—it doesn’t really mention the cons (in part because, I would submit, cons are rather hard to come by) so much as it exhorts colleges to “Look at what’s most important to your school and how technology will help you reach those goals.”
By that metric, we’ve found that Populi is a great fit for small colleges and the different situations they find themselves in: pursuing accreditation, getting a better grip on their information, expanding their online education presence, reducing infrastructure costs… to say nothing of simply better serving their students, faculty, and staff.
