Rio Salado Community College
For creating a customized course-management and student-services system.
For creating a customized course-management and student-services system to keep track of at-risk students on its Arizona campus and online. It’s the fastest-growing community college in the nation, with 70,000 students in Arizona and online nationwide—mostly poor, Hispanic, and first-generation. The RioLearn system alerts faculty when a student’s attendance slips or if anyone misses an assignment, and also sends students text message reminders. Within the first eight days of class, the data can predict which students are likely to drop out so that teachers can focus their attention on them. This year, the system began to offer news, alerts, social networking features, and a single sign-on for all campus systems.