The College of Western Idaho Increased Self-Service Registration by 165%

Before adopting Modern Campus Lumens, students enrolling in CWI’s Workforce Development division faced an enrollment experience that wasn’t streamlined. 

“Easily 60 to 75% of our enrollments would've been staff- assisted registrations, a lot of those from paper sheets,” said Tyler Brown, CWI’s Director of Operations for Workforce Development. 

What’s more, the lack of clarity built into the system meant that learners and companies would lack critical information about the courses and programs they were registering for—including the campus location of the offering!

“Companies would sign up their student for a one-day class for a certification and say, ‘Go to CWI for that class.’ But we have campuses in four different locations,” Brown recalled. “All the student would see or know about is that their boss signed them up for a class at CWI, and they'd show up in the wrong county to take their class.”  

Apprenticeship Programming was Difficult to Manage 

Additionally, given the lack of flexibility in most student information or program management systems, CWI was forced to offer programming in a lock-step fashion. While this ensured the college could manage their complex programs as best they could given their technology, it created some obstacles. 

First, it only allowed the college to offer programming once per year. Second, the lack of scheduling flexibility limited the opportunity for success for adult and working students. And finally, companies that were covering tuition for their new hires were forced to pay for a full year of programming up-front, with no real visibility into whether that individual would work out for them. 

“The apprentice programs to go from a new apprentice to a journeyman is a four-year journey, which means we offer the longest programs at our community college,” said Brown. “We have been offering those programs as an eight-month class—making them commit to the whole year’s worth of tuition.” 

It Was Impossible to Offer Discounts 

 While pricing discounts are a standard sales practice in every industry, the rigidity of the tech infrastructure at CWI meant they were never able to use that lever to increase enrollment numbers or engage corporate partners. 

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Other colleges may have an early bird registration discount or offer a discount for when people sign up for all four classes of the year. We've never ever done that ever at the college. I come from outside higher education, where you have to drive people to buy your product. Even in education, discounts and sales matter.

Tyler Brown

Results with Modern Campus Lumens

After adopting Modern Campus Lumens to manage their Workforce Division, the College of Western Idaho realized a range of benefits that’s supporting their growth while improving learner and corporate engagement. 

Improving the Corporate Education Experience 

 With Modern Campus Lumens, CWI enhanced its corporate engagement by offering customized experienced tailored for each client. 

“We’re taking steps toward having custom pages for each company by setting them up as subcategories, then then assigning classes made specifically for those companies,” Brown said. “When their employees log in, they’ll see a new tile on our homepage with their company’s name. Then they can click it and look at just the classes that we've created for that company. It sets us up to develop more custom contract classes for companies.”

Flexible Program Scheduling  

 Given the flexibility of Modern Campus Lumens, CWI could expand its approach to apprenticeship programming to offer more start dates, more flexibility for learner scheduling, and, ultimately, clearer pathways for success. 

“We've recently broken up our eight-month program into four eight-week sections,” Brown said. "Students can either get more flexibility by signing up for each eight-week segment one at a time, or they can sign up for the full year at once.” 

According to Brown, this creates benefits for the businesses they serve, the learners, and the college alike. 

“While we don't lock in as much revenue up front, it is a very friendly policy with the businesses that takes into account their attrition and staffing needs. And it also allows us to do three offerings a year,” he said. “And for students, it means they can take the time they need. If they had a big project come up, or they got an assignment in another county, or experienced a major life event, they can pause their schooling for eight weeks, go take care of that and then come right back in.” 

Discount Pricing 

 What’s more, by offering pricing discounting, Modern Campus Lumens allows CWI to modernize the customer experience it delivers to learners. 

 "Being able to offer discounts is going really well,” said Brown. “Even for someone who’s going to sign up anyways, knowing they can get a price break by signing up for the whole year—or can get the flexibility to sign up for shorter chunks—goes a long way.” 

Improved Operational Efficiency from a Streamlined Learner Experience 

 Finally, by streamlining the enrollment experience, Modern Campus Lumens is helping CWI’s team focus their time and energy on improving the learner experience, expanding corporate partnerships and innovating programming. 

After all, the number of enrollments being processed by students themselves through a self-service digital registration experience has grown 165% since adopting Lumens!  

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Easily 60 to 75% of our enrollments used to be staff-assisted registrations, a lot of those from paper sheets. Now two thirds are done without a staff member's help.

Tyler Brown