Center for Transforming Student Services (CENTSS)

eStudent Services has coordinated the administration of the CENTSS audits for the past four years. During the first round in 2007-2008, 22 Ohio higher education institutions participated. The second round began in spring 2010 and had 29 Ohio higher education institutions participating.

Ohio Institutions are Winners of Innovation Award in Online Student Services! See the press release.

Benefits of the CENTSS Audit for institutions are:

  •   Establish a baseline of how you deliver online student services now
  •   Quickly identify problem areas and develop strategies for improvement
  •   Create a common language for improvements
  •   Benchmark your progress against your peers locally, statewide, or nationally
  •   Track and compare your progress year after year
  •   Inform decisions about technology purchases using tested and individualized data

Benefits of the CENTSS Audit for the State of Ohio:

  •   Aggregate baseline data systemwide to identify strengths and possible areas for improvement
  •   Identify areas where collaborative institutional purchases could be pursued to reduce costs
  •   Identify online services that could be centralized for systemwide efficiencies and costs savings

How does it work?

The CENTSS audit tool provides a series of multiple choice and open text questions about services in 31 student service areas such as admissions, academic advising, career counseling, and tutoring. It then compiles the responses into a confidential report. The CENTSS audit also enables the the Ohio higher education system to aggregate responses, and to identify trends across the system for the purpose of planning deployment of eStudent Services.

Services are assessed on a scale of 1-5, which is defined as follows:

  • Generation 1: Service is not provided on Web site
  • Generation 2: Informational, internal focus on institution
  • Generation 3: Informational, audience-focused (Prospective students' link, continuing students' link, etc.)
  • Generation 4: Process-oriented - customized community, personalized, portal
  • Generation 5: Virtual mentor process orientation, and decision-making guide