Outside The Classroom and StudentVoice Partner to Provide Innovative Assessment Service
10/1/2009
New platform will help colleges and universities correlate student alcohol use with other key campus metrics
BOSTON, MA - October 1, 2009 - Outside The Classroom today announced that it has partnered with StudentVoice, the leader in assessment solutions and technology for higher education, to help colleges and universities explore the relationship between student alcohol use and mission-critical student affairs issues, such as retention, academic success, and student satisfaction.
Through this partnership, institutions using Outside The Classroom's AlcoholEdu® for College online prevention program will gain unprecedented access to their student data, which will now reside on the StudentVoice platform, opening powerful opportunities for internal cross-project reporting and external cross-campus benchmarking as these campuses strive to understand student behavior around alcohol.
"High-risk drinking continues to be the number-one challenge facing higher education today, and Outside The Classroom has partnered with the number-one provider of assessment solutions to help our partners learn more about the alcohol challenge," said Brandon Busteed, Founder and CEO of Outside The Classroom. "Linking data on alcohol with information about the campus experience and student learning outcomes will help campuses cross new frontiers."
StudentVoice has collaborated on assessment initiatives with more than 350 campuses nationwide, helping campuses collect, report, and analyze data to measure outcomes, develop programs, and expand services that promote student success. The StudentVoice platform provides the means to link data from multiple sources, making assessment reporting more efficient and meaningful.
"Most colleges and universities are not lacking in data. Rather, they are often lacking in opportunities to combine data in meaningful ways," said Eric Reich, President and Co-Founder of StudentVoice. " The value of a centralized assessment platform is realized when data from multiple sources can be easily integrated to create a more holistic understanding of the student experience. And now, with access to the country's largest and most comprehensive dataset on college drinking, college personnel will have the ability to gain insights that had not previously been possible."
"For years our profession has wanted to better understand the linkages between student alcohol behaviors and academic success, but the resources and logistics required to do so were prohibitive," said Kevin Kruger, Associate Executive Director of NASPA. "The partnership of Outside the Classroom and StudentVoice, two companies that are widely known as pioneers in their respective fields, could very well emerge as a watershed moment for the study of alcohol on college campuses."
About Outside The Classroom
For nearly a decade, Outside The Classroom has been committed to strengthening the field of alcohol prevention by providing institutional leaders and their students with the information needed to develop well-informed, cost-effective strategies for reducing alcohol-related risk and preventing harm. Today, the organization's flagship educational program, AlcoholEdu® for College, is used on hundreds of campuses and by 36 percent of all first-year students at America's higher education institutions. In 2008, Outside The Classroom launched The Alcohol Prevention Coalition to take on the larger scope of the work - providing institution-wide solutions to the key challenges threatening effective alcohol prevention. All of Outside The Classroom's programs are developed under the leadership of national prevention expert William DeJong, PhD. For more information please visit www.outsidetheclassroom.com.
About StudentVoice
StudentVoice is the leader in providing innovative assessment resources, technology, and consultation to hundreds of colleges and universities across North America. StudentVoice provides the means to organize assessment activities, collect assessment data, benchmark with peer campuses, and report assessment data in meaningful ways. Through the utilization of StudentVoice's assessment platform, colleges and universities are able to measure student learning, enhance programs and services, and ensure student success. Founded by two University at Buffalo students in 2001, StudentVoice is headquartered in Buffalo, NY and has offices in Boston, Washington D.C. and Denver. For more information please visit www.studentvoice.com.