We have been thrilled by the excitement in the higher education market surrounding data-driven decision making. Provosts and Academic Departments, as we had hoped, have responded with great excitement to our Alpha release of the Platinum Analytics Toolset (see http://www.aais.com/platinum.html). What we didn't expect, is the emotional response to the companion tool - the Student Academic Career Planner.

The Academic Career Planner leverages the analytics engine to allow students and advisors build intelligent end-to-end academic career plans. Instead of just picking courses for an upcoming term, this tool highlights the entire path to completion - and the most efficient route past all of the degree rule constraints and potential pitfalls. The emotion has come from all of the great ideas that our Innovators Group (see http://www.aais.com/support/about.aspx?tabindex=1&tabid=29&ab=cb) have come up with for deploying this tool. Here's a sample:

• A University that wants to study using the tool to promote and administer "guaranteed four-year graduation tracks"
• A Community college that wants to encourage students (through the tool) to take additional courses each term, generating additional revenue and advancing students more rapidly to their individual goals
• An institution in a competitive admissions environment looking to use the Planner as a way to differentiate itself by allowing prospective students to select plans and "save seats" in those plans' courses for those students
• Several Institutions that want to integrate the Planner into the advisement process by having students save tentative plans prior to being able to book an advisement appointment and ultimately refine the plans with advisors prior to receiving an online registration key
• Several Institutions that want to use the Planner to measure graduation rates v. each student's goal graduation date
• Several Institutions that want to work with our team to develop alerts when a student has a critical path course (a course that they must get this term, or their graduation will be delayed)

For a guy who has been emotional about these topics for years, its nice to have some more company! Even more, I love how these schools have come up with creative ways to leverage these tools that I would never have envisioned. Thanks, Innovators!