Executive Summary
Community and technical colleges play an essential role in bridging local skills gaps
and supporting the social and economic growth of their communities. These mission-driven
institutions operate in extremely competitive environments and it’s essential to find
ways to stand out from the noise.
To that end, and in collaboration with existing community and technical college partners
in both the United States and Canada, Modern Campus is launching an optimized version
of their industry-leading student lifecycle management platform Destiny One specifically
for these institutions.
The Destiny One Workforce and Community Solution (WCS) is tailored to meet the needs
of community colleges with best practices, pre-populated data, and implementation
processes designed specifically for this industry.
The Critical Role of Community and Technical Colleges
Community and technical colleges across North America play a central role in creating
pathways to sustainable employment for individuals in their communities, and building
a workforce that grows their regions into economic powerhouses. But they face some
central challenges to delivering that vision.
To compete with new entrants in the skills training sector—including private providers,
coding bootcamps and even universities—community colleges need to bring the same quality
that goes into their program design to their administrative culture. College leaders
need to create the necessary infrastructure that accelerates program launches. They
need to deliver a customer experience that allows learners to progress intuitively
through their enrollment process. They need to offer employers a simplified administrative
experience that encourages their long-term engagement with the college.
These traits are central to a college that stands out to its prospects and serves
its key stakeholders well.
“We know about 75 percent of our students are first-generation college students, we
know our students are economically disadvantaged, we know there’s diversity in our
population and in their family backgrounds,” said Brenda Hellyer, Chancellor of San
Jacinto College. “What you see in our organization is a commitment to work with these
students to help them succeed.”
How Destiny One Optimizes the Growth of Non-Traditional Divisions
Destiny One, the student lifecycle management (SLM) software platform from Modern
Campus, addresses all these issues and allows those that serve non-traditional learners
to deliver the experience their stakeholders expect. Made specifically for higher
education administrators serving non-traditional students, Destiny One allows colleges
to deliver education across the modern lifelong learning lifecycle, supporting revenue
and enrollment growth through an eCommerce-enhanced customer experience. In addition,
Destiny One secures sensitive data, and delivers the agility needed for today’s institutions
to be competitive.
Automated workflows accelerate the program approval process and minimize drop-off,
speeding up the time-to-market for new offerings and the update cycle for existing
ones. The registration experience, which is designed around eCommerce best-practices,
transforms divisional websites into enrollment engines. And with the industry-leading
Corporate Engagement Manager module, employers can batch enroll their employees, access
receipts and select offerings for customized catalogs that take specialized pricing
into account.
“
Our clients, particularly those on the marine industry side, want a very simple way
to reach us. Destiny One will make registration quicker and easier for our corporate
clients.
Geoff WilmshurstVice President of Partnerships, Camosun College
Why We’re Launching Destiny One Workforce and Community
Destiny One allows colleges to deliver the kind of elite experience needed to keep
pace with the realities of a fast-changing industry.
With numerous community colleges already in its partner ranks, Modern Campus has further
optimized Destiny One to drive the growth and transformation of community and technical
colleges across North America.
“An important factor for us was Modern Campus's experience with community colleges,”
said Bob Peterson, President and CEO of the Corporate College at Cuyahoga Community
College (Tri-C).
“Some of the other products on the market were being offered by vendors who were just
breaking into the community college market,” Peterson continued. “We didn’t want to
be a guinea pig.”
After collaborating with our many partners in the space, we found ways to make the
software adhere to best practices in an affordable way, to simplify the implementation
process, and to reduce the strain on college staff to get the product up and running.
Therefore, Modern Campus is launching a version of the industry-leading Destiny One
SLM tailored specifically to support mission-driven community and technical colleges.
Designed with leaders of Destiny’s community college clients, the Destiny One Workforce
and Community Solution (WCS) makes our industry-leading student lifecycle management
software accessible to colleges of all sizes and budgets. And the impact of the software
is already clear in this space.
“
In less than six months, we have seen an increase in the number of students registering
online using Destiny one. In the meantime, our online registrations have grown 52
percent over the same period the previous year.
Bob PetersonPresident and CEO of Corporatte College, Tri-C
Overall at Tri-C, within six months of implementing Destiny One they grew their non-credit
enrollments by 16% across the board.
Here’s how Destiny One WCS has been optimized to meet your needs:
- Providing Best Practices and Pre-Populated Data
- Making Destiny One WCS More Affordable
- Accelerating the Implementation Process
Designed for You: Providing Best Practices and Pre-Populated Data
Over the course of many engagements with community colleges, we recognized that the
Destiny One product could be optimized and designed specifically to do business in
this unique and fast-paced sector. The Destiny One product is robust and wide-ranging—allowing
for a huge amount of flexibility and individualization from college to college. Working
with our community college clients, we identified similarities in some of the foundational
aspects of how the system was being set up by community and technical college partners.
Destiny One WCS is delivered pre-configured with best practices and selected, pre-loaded
data to deliver a superior student experience, operational efficiency, and ease of
implementation. Destiny One WCS has been optimized for community and technical colleges,
in three key areas:
- Pre-Configured Best Practices: Destiny One WCS is pre-configured to align with the operational best practices of
leading community and technical colleges. With business rules standardized to those
of industry leaders, colleges of all sizes can stand out against their competitors
and present their unique program offerings to a wider audience. Additionally, the
configuration approach means that Destiny One WCS supports the efficiency of internal
staff—allowing them to focus on true value-added activities rather than more manual
processes—and accelerates the time to launch for the new system.
- Common Data Population: Destiny One WCS is delivered with a back-end database pre-populated with common information
and content community and technical colleges desire. This means information like credential
types, drop reasons, tuition price override reasons, section offerings, course modalities
and more—options that generally lay the foundation for the use of the software—will
be pre-populated for immediate use. As such, staff will be able to spend their time
and energy on work that’s specific and unique to their particular college.
- Simplified Admin Menus and Data Entry: Destiny One WCS has both a simplified administrative menu structure and redesigned
forms promoting rapid data entry needs of community colleges. Many of the menu options
available in the core Destiny One product have been hidden to simplify setup and new
user training. As staff become more familiar with the platform, system administrators
are free to enable new menu options and unlock additional features using self-service
configuration tools. The course and section profile data entry forms—two of the longest
forms in the Destiny One product—have also been redesigned to allow staff to focus
on essential information at a glance, with the ability to drill down deeper if and
as needed.
Building Your Potential: Packaging Destiny One WCS to Support Your Business
We understand the critical mission colleges play in their communities and so we packaged
Destiny One WCS specifically to help these institutions achieve their goals with minimal
roadblocks.
- Building In Corporate Engagement Manager: To start, the Corporate Engagement Manager—typically an add-on module—has been incorporated
into the core product. This means colleges who make Destiny One WCS part of their
back-end infrastructure will immediately have access to this tool designed specifically
to build lasting relationships with employers.
- Making Modules Accessible: What’s more, Modern Campus’ other modules—including Conference Manager, Badging and
Dashboards—are available to Destiny One WCS clients at package rates. These modules
increase the capacity for community and technical colleges to serve more diverse audiences.
- Increasing Ties with Main Campus: Destiny One WCS also includes reduced pricing for our suite of connectors, like the
Ellucian Banner Connector powered by Axiom Elite. These allow workforce development
and community engagement divisions of community colleges to create those essential
integrations between their environment and the main campus SIS or ERP system.
“That was a particular advantage that Destiny One had over the competition: Destiny
could communicate with Banner, and the competition could not,” said Peterson, from
Tri-C. “If Destiny One didn’t integrate with Banner, it would have effectively created
a two-step process where student registration and financial information would not
automatically migrate into Banner. It would have to be downloaded and then uploaded.
With that, you always have the possibility for errors. It’s not as efficient a process.”
Getting You Live: Accelerating the Implementation Process
Recognizing the importance of a fast and efficient implementation, with minimum institutional
resource involvement required, Destiny One WCS allows colleges to choose from two
specific services offerings designed to accelerate and simplify the implementation
process while also leveraging the power of the solution.
