It was a formidable experience for the whole Attendance Radar team that Indiana Wesleyan University in the United States of America chose to use Attendance Radar during their International Residency Program across several of their campuses. We are very grateful, proud and excited to have them as our first university client in the United States, we are certain that they chose the right student attendance tracking solution.
Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) is a private evangelical Christian institution affiliated with the Wesleyan Church, established in 1920 and headquartered in Marion, Indiana. Serving around 13,000 students with the support of approximately 1,500 faculty members, IWU offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs. The university operates multiple campuses and regional education centers across Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, emphasizing accessibility and flexibility. Known for its strong faith-based education and commitment to community service, IWU prepares students for leadership roles in their professions and communities.
The international residencies are a mandatory requirement for students that participate in their international hybrid programmes and that are in the US under F1 visas. These dynamic programmes support international students that seek to come or remain in the US to study, also supporting students that are looking for CPT or post-completion OPT. It goes without saying then that these international residencies are very important for the students, with it being particularly crucial that their attendance is recorded in an efficient but very accurate way. That is where Attendance Radar came in to save the day!
After a brief testing period Attendance Radar was used in three residencies in July in which attendances were tracked in an easy, fast and cheat-proof way using our innovative low-energy Bluetooth signal. This was by far the largest use of the University Version of Attendance Radar so far, as illustrated by these key statistics below:
20 000+
3 000+
500+
75+
50+
Despite the very large volume of activity the app experienced, it´s performance was formidable and the Codific team received virtually zero support requests across the three residencies. Deedee Smith, the Director of International Student Program Residencies at IWU had the following to say about the use of Attendance Radar and working with our team:
“Attendance Radar has been fantastic to work with and highly responsive to our needs. Attendance Radar provided our faculty with a low-stress method of student accountability and timelines and it provided our students with a hassle-free way to mark themselves present. On the back end, Codific is working with us to export the attendance reports more quickly and efficiently. Codific has felt like a true partner rather than just a vendor.”
Nevertheless, as with all previous deployment of the University Version there were some key learnings which we have reflected upon, prioritized in our development pipeline and already started to implement to continue to improve our solution, this include:
- Improvements to the course import format to make it more efficient in the way courses are imported and the way it can be used to update previously imported courses. With this we have added functionality to add multiple trainers into a course using the import.
- Adding external ID information into attendance report Excel export to more easily match the attendance records in our system with the courses in IWU’s database.
- Improving workflow to set up custom authentication for single sign-on purposes.
- Prioritized releasing our variable emit time and lateness scan features to allow trainers to emit for a shorter or longer time and allow them to scan for late students.
Overall, the first experience of IWU with the University Version of Attendance Radar was truly a success and we are extremely proud of this as it shows that all the hard work we put into improving this solution has truly paid off. Moving forward, IWU will continue to be our client and use Attendance Radar in all their international student residencies in the 2024 – 2025 academic year. It goes without saying that we are very excited to continue to work with them.
We are currently looking for institutions that are interested in running a pilot of the University Version of Attendance Radar, do you think your organization would be a good fit?
